


Behind Glass Bars

by Syri



Category: Cain Saga and Godchild
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-12-07
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2017-10-27 01:10:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 55,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/289921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syri/pseuds/Syri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Jizabel lay dying, he expected hellfire. Instead, he wakes with a blank hour in his memory and no body to speak of. A ghost, he supposed, one who followed Cassians every footstep, even as he watched him fall apart with grief. But as Jizabel watched him take his own life, he didn't stay. He passed on, leaving Jizabel alone.</p><p>A history professor purchases the home Cassian grew up in, the home Jizabel followed him to. Intent on flipping the house and restoring its historical value, Down-to-earth Cooper is a perfect skeptic, never believing the ghost stories these homes have. Until, that is, he finds the oddities of the house unexplainable, and terrifying. Even more unsettling, whatever is haunting these halls seems not to want him gone, as he originally thought, but to stay there with it. And frankly after a while, Cooper isn’t sure he wants to leave</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Jizabel had never been here before, to this tiny little town on the very outer reaches of London. Whether it was a village with its own name, or merely served as the city’s border, he couldn’t say. He didn’t know the lives of the people behind the pretty but outdated glass windows, nor could he name any of the streets Cassian tread down. Certainly he didn’t know his way through them.

Cassian did, though; it was obvious by the sure way his feet took him down the stone roads. He never even looked up, at least, not often. When he did, it wasn’t to check landmarks or signs; no, he seemed to know this town better than Jizabel knew his own home. Instead, any flickering of dark eyes was only to check that no one else was crossing their way. Jizabel found his suspicious nature highly unusual for Cassian, let alone unnecessary; it was well past sundown, but nowhere near dawn. In a sleepy suburb such as this, he doubted anyone would be awake.

Still, Cassian kept close watch, taking only backstreets and seedy alleyways, though Jizabel suspected for a child who grew up as Cassian had, such places weren’t unfamiliar.

Behind him, Cassian pulled a sizeable cart, the sort Jizabel often saw vendors and merchants use. He didn’t know exactly what was inside, but he suspected it wasn’t fine pottery or potatoes to be roasted. What he could see was a hodgepodge of russacks, a few expensive looking embroidered linens, and a good sized trunk.

For some reason, Jizabel got a sick feeling every time he glanced at the trunk. There was something inside of it that he knew he didn’t want to see. He’d like to ask Cassian, could probably command him to tell, but Cassian didn’t seem to be in a talking mood. He hadn’t spoken a word to Jizabel the entire night.

Jizabel thought it had been maybe three hours since they’d set out, but time seemed very vague within the deepest hours of darkness. He guessed, though, that the night wasn’t the only thing throwing him off.

The house they stopped before was a nice one, back behind the town itself, but it was obviously not in its prime. It stood very empty, with not a single of it’s many windows left intact. Probably one of Cassian’s new hangouts, since he’d been living on the streets. Was he planning on returning home now? Jizabel couldn’t blame him. This was much nicer than Delilah. Of course, that option wasn’t around anymore. For either of them.

Jizabel wondered fleetingly if Cassian would invite him to stay as well, but the idea never even had time to take root before he remembered that such a thing was now unnecessary. One had no real need for a bed to sleep in when they were well and dead.

He supposed he should have come upon this realization in a state of panic, but really it was more a bemused daze than anything so far. He’d come to like a fevered patient awaking from a long sleep, groggy, heavy, and being only slightly aware of the world outside dreams at first. He supposed he could recall Cassian carrying him from a collapsing building, and stealing a cart to run away, but he couldn’t be sure if this was memory, or just his mind filing in the gaps on what he supposed happened. Truthfully, he first became truly aware on the long trip here on the mud soaked roads that took them to this town.

It was on this path that it occurred to him that he was dead. It didn’t happen like a gaslight being lit, or a bell rung. Instead, it was something he seemed to instantly know, rather like how one never really had a memory of being told that fire burned, they just knew it. So it had crossed his mind that he couldn’t feel the cobblestones he trod upon, nor the chilled evening breeze that forced Cassian under so many grungy layers.

Somehow, he was ok with that. He supposed he should have been filled with panic, but all things considered, this wasn’t as bad as it could be. Being dead could certainly have its upside. In fact, he was more in shock over the final moments of life than his first hours of death.

Cassian…that man had returned for him. How long had he been planning? He’d been gone so many months…had he wanted to return all that time? Most importantly...what now?

He supposed his current condition of being deceased spared him from that particular decision, but it still left him puzzled. Why did Cassian come back? Well, not quite…he could see that Cassian had, somehow, formed a closeness to him, some sort of connection, one that even Jizabel felt, however faintly it had shown before this night. As Cassian held him, berated him for his foolishness (and a fool he was) he’d felt an almost painful longing, as though Cassian couldn’t possibly hold him close enough, tight enough, or with enough tenderness. Though, having this feeling, that Cassian felt the same, seemed to make up for it. Cassian wanted to be there. No one was making him, he had nothing to gain by it, and it was certainly an unpleasant thing at the time, but he did it nonetheless.

Was it because he loved him? Jizabel wasn’t sure he could fathom that. Not yet. He’d taken one last glance at Cassian before his world grew dark, and knew, instantly, that this is the man Alexis should have been. Or, more correctly, the man Jizabel should have followed as he’d followed Alexis. Cassians tender embrace, his soft shushing as he saw Jizabel's pain, those were the things he’d hoped Alexis would do, felt he ought to do but never did. Yet here was a man who had no need, acting as the father Jizabel had never knew.

He supposed with death came a sadness, that he would never get to feel that again. He followed Cassian now with the trust of a small child walking after their parent, for at the moment, Jizabel had never felt such an assured connection between that word and the person he could attribute it to. Mother, she left him, father was a monster, but Cassian was…how could it be that this man would show him such innocent affection, where his own parents had abandoned him?

He imagined the inside to be as chilled as the outside, but still and far more musty smelling. However, as Cassian lit an oil lamp, he could see it wasn’t quite as gloomy as he’d thought. Though filled with broken bits and shambled furniture, it was cleaner than such a building should be, as though someone had been tending to the ruins. Through a cracked doorway, he could even see a makeshift bedroom, with two hay mattresses spread on the floor, waiting for guests. Somehow, the image of the two separate, secure beds gave him a sense of peace, affirming that Cassian’s motives were not all selfish or wrongly ordered, that he expected nothing of that sort from Jizabel.

He couldn’t he sure, with the dim light, but the books lining the far wall looked suspiciously like a few tomes he’d noticed he’d…misplaced…these past weeks. And were those his one spare pair of glasses on a makeshift nightstand?

Cassian didn’t seem interested in going in there; in fact, as he neared it, he ducked his head lower still and hunched his shoulders, as though something about the room pained him. Could it be that now, there was only need for a single bed?

The house itself seemed to not be Cassian’s current destination. Instead, he merely dumped the bags from the cart into the dining room, and rushed back outside to where the cart, and the trunk and linens still lay.

Carefully rooting through thick vines and brush, Cassian heaved the cart to the secluded backyard, so overgrown it was hard to tell where the property ended and the dense woods behind the house began.

Silently, marveling vaguely at how he needn’t struggle as Cassian did, he followed, wondering if Cassian could see anything of him, a glimmer perhaps? He followed deep into the woods, a good ten minutes, till Cassian seemed to decide something. Cassian threw off the outer and most burdensome of his layers, including his hat, and for the first time, Jizabel could fully see his face. It was ashen, and seemed lined with worry, and exhaustion. At the same time, it was stoic, as though Cassian wasn’t allowing himself to feel much of anything right now. And Jizabel had to wonder…was he truly mourning for him?

Out from the cart came the fancy linens. Where Cassian stole them, he had no idea, but they were beautiful. Heavy tablecloths, it looked, with delicate silk embroidery. Nothing Cassian could have bought, for sure.

Underneath them, aside from the trunk, lay a spade and a sizeable shovel, and Jizabel wasn’t particularly pleased to see them unveiled. He already had a horrible suspicion on what lay in that trunk, but disbelief was shielding him from acknowledging it.

The spade broke the topsoil with ease, allowing for fairly easy digging, for someone with Cassian’s strong, new body.

For hours he labored, panting and grunting with exertion but not seeming to truly tire. His task was surely an important one, as the pit he dug grew deeper and wider with each fling of the shovel.

The sky above the trees was starting to show the faintest pink stain before he finally climbed out, filthy and sweating but still not seeming to have any particular feeling. Instead, he merely strode over to the cart and, in turn, to the trunk lifting its creaking lid.

Where Cassian’s movements before were all deliberate, strong, confident and powerful, now he moved much more softly. He held himself different, as though whatever he was scooping from the trunk was something very precious to him.

Jizabel didn’t want to look, he really didn’t. He wanted to fling his eyes closed and turn away, wishing he could pull himself from Cassian and flee, but it was too late. He wasn’t quick enough to avoid seeing a long tumble of ash blonde hair draping over Cassian’s arm. By then, he couldn’t’ force his eyes to avert.

He looked…horrible not like sleeping. Not at all. His skin had grown pale from the loss of blood, which now caked his hair. His clothes too were saturated with now brown fluid, not the pretty color Jizabel usually loved. At his throat he saw the true reason he’d had no chance to live; he hadn’t realized how deeply he’d gashed, and his throat now actually hung somewhat open, as did his mouth and clouded eyes.

Finally he could see Cassians composure breaking, as he brushed stiff locks of hair from Jizabel's face. His own featured pinched as he did so.

“Damn it, Jizabel,” he whispered hoarsely, as though his throat ached. “Of all the times of your life to finally have a fucking mind of your own!”

All the same, his actions were as soft as his voice was rough. From a deep pocket he withdrew a rag and a flask of water, and began to scrub at the dried blood. His chest was far too filthy to try, but his face and hands were tenderly wiped clean, closing his eyes as he did so.

Jizabel stood rooted where he was, trying to will himself to move. He wasn’t quite as horrified as he would have thought, seeing his own corpse laid in front of him. Perhaps the mask of death was so familiar to him now, that even his own body couldn’t disgust him. He saw beauty in death, after all. Not in the mangled corpse as much as just the stillness of a quiet heart.

The fancy linens were to serve as his shroud, he could now see, as Cassian laid him in the soft fabric, taking the most tender care on wrapping him. He folded his arms gently across his chest, and, as Jizabel watched, cupped his face and laid a soft kiss on his forehead. He could see his lips moving, quivering, as he pulled away and covered his face, but he could hear no words.

Jizabel knew, though. A day ago he wouldn’t have believed his first guess, and even now he couldn’t convince himself completely that Cassian would say such a thing, but somehow, he knew.

Though Cassian would not hear, though there was no one to hear him ever again, Jizabel responded anyway, in a whispers as soft as the wind. Because though he was sure the word didn’t mean the same to him as it did to everyone else, because although he wasn’t sure he’d ever truly felt it in his life, though he wasn’t sure he could tell it from obsession or admiration or a need to be dependant on another, he liked to think he loved him, too.

)o(

All comments are loved.


	2. Vacancy

William Cooper had heard it said before that smell was the most powerful of the senses when it came to recovering memories. He couldn't recall where, ironically enough; Discovery Channel, probably, or something in a textbook. Perhaps the stale coffee and Ramen smell of his freshman psychology class could remind him.

Whoever had first presented him with the theory couldn't know how right they were, each time Cooper purchased another new house. The moment he clicked the lock and swing the door open on usually (hopefully) creaking hinges, the smell of the home wafted around him, baring with it not only his own nostalgia, but the memoirs and keepsake moments of owners past. Each was unique; cigars and bootleg whiskey in one, or the overwhelming stench of cricket corpses and stale linens in another, but all mixed to form a similar concoction. Years of decay and abuse left all his treasured houses with the air of age, of inches of dust settled on mirrors and ottomans and curio cabinets. Sometimes he was lucky enough to find it mingled with the enticement of century-old pages…what hadn't been devoured by bookworms.

Each drifting scent always took him back to memories he could only have by proxy, to the lives of those that had lived here 50, 100, 200 years prior. Here in their kitchens, mothers or, for the wealthy, maids had tended stoves boiling over with soups and gravies and other savory foods. Bedrooms still often housed vanities and bed frames or a rotted mattress if he was that unfortunate. He never knew.

But that's what Cooper loved about his houses. He often bought them at auction, having little or no time at all to look around inside, if potential buyers were even allowed through the door pre-purchase. It was rather like a treasure hunt, digging the chest from the hot sand and anticipating what one might find inside. And he got to do it year after year, starting every summer between terms.

Though a history professor was his official career title, Coopers "other job" as he called it involved buying and fixing up old homes, restoring them to their historic splendor as accurately as he could manage. While he loved teaching, bringing back these little bits of history was his passion. They always ended up being sold to preservation societies of one sort or another, usually then fashioned into museums, but Cooper wasn't getting any younger, and he was starting to look for a house to finally just live in. it was far too early to tell if this was the one, of course (he was never one to propose marriage on a first date) but he always kept his eyes open.

He had to admit; this home had grandeur to it, as his favorites always did. From what little he knew, it was built in 1852; a beautiful Victorian. Or it had once been. Over the decades as both residents and fashion came and went, the home had undergone its share of remodels, most strikingly the nauseating color palette for the foyer that couldn't come from any other decade but the 70's.

Still, though, Cooper soaked up the buildings years as he stood in the center of the foyer, not having even dropped his luggage yet. Oh it was a sad sight. He remembered when he was little and he saw the black and white and sepia tone photographs on his grandmother's wall, and asked her when the world changed over to color.

"Obviously wasn't before 1852!" he chuckled to himself, as indeed, the soot and dirt lying over the room muted even the most vivid colors. Everything paled to shades of sickly gray, white and brown. Though considering the tiny glimpses of avocado green and buckwheat yellow that shone through where his hands brushed, perhaps this was a mercy on his sense of taste. God he hated the seventies.

Pity for the rest of the house though. The shelves and surfaces were almost barren of any actual objects, but the furniture itself was sure to be stunning once cleaned. He'd rummage sale the retro sofa and the cheap thrift store kitchen set to a buyer with more interests in that era, but the rest of it? Ohh it was his. Large pieces, built sturdy and far too heavy to have been easily moved. He swiped his hand over the middle shelf of a massive doublewide bookcase and admired the quality of the carvings once he was done having an asthmatic fit over the dust. Damn. He should know better by now.

It was always at this point that the sheer enormity of his job would begin to settle, not unlike the very soot he was stirring into his poor defenseless lungs. This was the home or an upper-class family, at least when it was built. It was three stories, an attic, a cellar, lord only knew how many rooms, closets, staircases, passages, cabinets, cupboards and windows would need his care. And cleaning was just the start! Then there was rot and termites to keep him and his bank account both on edge. This wouldn't be the first house where he'd awoke to some six legged critter scuttling in his hair.

His family back in Nebraska thought he was completely off it, had ever since he packed up and moved to England twenty years ago. His dear Mom still told acquaintances that this was "Just a phase," though she said it in a much kinder manner once that "phase" paid off her car.

Perhaps they're right, Cooper mused as he scooped his bags off the floor, noting only vaguely the deep scuffed tracks they left in the grimy carpet. It was a little mad, these projects of his. He did it all himself, save for gaslines and electrical work (he may not be the soundest of minds, but he wasn't completely psych ward material yet) and he'd had to console himself some evenings with a tall bottle of Captain Morgan and a marathon sleep to be ready to face the endless scrubbing, gutting and sanding that needed done.

It was always worth it in the end, though, to see such beautiful hones as they were meant to be. Hopefully this would be no different.

Being so early in the day, not even lunch, Cooper would have loved to dive right in and start mopping, but he'd tried that before and the results weren't in his favor. He was the sort to get overeager and jump right into something without so must as flicking a toe in to see if he'd scald himself. Patience was easy for him when it involved a second party; his nieces, his students, his beloved but high strung mother. But he had no patience for himself. A coworker had once described him like a little boy who'd just gotten a birthday invitation, and wanted to dress for the party right that moment.

As such, many of his houses had taken a lot more work than needed. His first, he'd spent four hours sweeping all the hardwood floors, corner to corner, whisking bunnies out of the dark corners where they procreated like…well…bunnies, only to lok around beaming and realize he hadn't dusted a single shelf before hand. All his hard work for nothing as the dirt landed right back on his beautiful floor.

Oh yes, it was a Captain Morgan night.

So despite his inner nine year old wanting to either go straight up to the attic to sift through storage or draw out floor layouts, it was not the time for such fun extras…besides, he'd drawn up 16 on the train ride here already…

Somewhere between childish excitement and his Victoriphilia, there was somehow enough room to squeee in a little rational thought, once he kicked a few boxes of useless jeopardy knowledge and one recipe for bratwurst aside. It was a time for work, with more than enough time for play later.

…though surely a self tour couldn't hurt. He had to become familiar with his new habitat after all. For safety reasons. Needed to find a room to sleep in. And if he somehow got lost and ended up having to search through closets of old clothes to find his way back out, that was a risk he'd just have to take.

Cooper felt his body relax and ease as he wandered the halls, a mercy after the cramped and jarring train he took clear from the other side of London. Though his neck cramped and ached from the awkward angle he'd found himself asleep in, it seemed to loosen and ease as he drank in his new surroundings. It was a natural high for him, really. Perhaps this is why he never married…he couldn't image most women sharing his passion for history.

By the time he reached the second story, he knew already that he'd be in need of a bath soon. Just the tiny vibrations of his footfalls on the steps were enough to unsettle a few decades of dust and dead insects from the molding and onto his clothes. He was sure if he had a mirror he would find himself looking quite ghastly, his already mousy brown hair dulled to an unappealing gray and adding twenty years to his appearance. Coupled with the wear it put on his jeans and button-up, he looked rather like he went with the house, a thought that curled the corners of his mouth in delight. Oh he often wished…

As he passed each room, his mind filled with ideas, as though his brain was little more than an artists tablet, paint and graphite and putty all swirling around to recreate what he knew each bit of space should look like. This was a child's room, he was sure, while the grand view out these bay windows over there indicated it was for the Master and Mistress of the house. He wondered vaguely if he'd find the servants quarters intact or if they as well had been renovated to serve a practical purpose. Plenty of time to find out, he supposed.

)o(

Sounds echoed through the corridors, pretty sounds, lovely sounds. Sounds so pleasing to hear. Not the sounds of the floorboards creaking or pipes falling to bits. No it was not the rhythms of home that could be heard, those were well worn and familiar. The timber and metal and granite that formed this space had its own song to sing, a heartbeat even, broken windows letting wind whistle in a thrum through its veins. This was not it's breathing, not its groaning or wheeng and sounds of sleep.

The word "Footsteps" floated through fleetingly, but one could not be sure. Words meant so very little. Almost no meaning. Not now. Not after so long.

Words were pretty though, if one could recall what they sounded like. Footsteps too were a lovely sound, if they were footsteps. Perhaps they weren't. One couldn't be sure, not after so long.

Regardless, they were a lovely sound. One to savor again sometimes, after more sleep.

)o(

"No, I do NOT have my address wrong," Cooper struggled to not raise his voice into the phone. It wasn't easy; even his own well of patience could only go so far before running dry. And few things tried him more than playing the run-around with spools of red tape.

He was pacing in his kitchen, which could scarcely be recognized as such currently, and had been on his cell phone for the last two hours trying to contract an electrician, a contractor and to contact the city to talk about having the gas and electricity turned back on. Once again, he underestimated how much work this task would be, and assumed he could leave it for once he moved in. bad mistake.

He half listened to the secretary ramble on something about taking at least a week for wires to be routed to his home before he started pounding his brow against the doorframe. He knew this story. It was often true; the homes he occupied were often long abandoned and settled either in ghettos or simply the middle of nowhere, and logically speaking it would take some extra effort to restore it with a few creature comforts. But too often it was a bullshit excuse to hide how cowardly full grown men could be. Cooper knew the real reason he often had to flip through the local phone book twice before finding someone to wire his house; ghosts.

Or more rather, nonsense ghost stories any home built before 1950 seemed to come with; standard, like air conditioning in a Chevy.

Every job had its aggravating downfalls, and for Cooper tales of hauntings and specters did it for him. Each house had its own version of the same generic gut-twister; some poor man, woman or child met their death through suicide, tragic accident or passion-fueled murder, and their restless spirit clung to the local run-down Edwardian manor, renovated history museum or bed and breakfast.

He wished they'd at least get creative. If he was going to laugh at old wives tales, it might as well be for a better reason than just skepticism. Well, and seeing men half his age and twice his weight scream like middle school girls every time someone in the house closed a door. Honestly, how could some people take themselves seriously every morning?

He scratched irritably at his five o clock shadow and began to think his time on the phone would be better used ordering Chinese take out.

"Listen, I need to have someone out here Monday morning. I'm already living here and I'd like to bathe with something that doesn't come out of a plastic bot- yes, I just said I am…Oh it's decapitated this time, that's splendid. Haven't seen one of those since I was living in the states…yes…yes, and how does it tell me to get out if it has no head? Uh huh…thought so. Monday morning it is then?...yes, I'll hold."

And he immediately hung up, snapping his phone closed and suppressing the urge to chuck it cross the kitchen. With no lights, air conditioning or running water, he couldn't afford to loose his one tie to the twenty-first century. As much as he longed for and admired the past, now was not the time to mimic it.

Instead, he simply turned the page in the directory and dialed up another local company.

2 hours, 2 cans of Pepsi and a dozen phone calls later he finally found someone willing to work on his house. He never thought he'd be grateful to hear someone call his place of residence a shithole slum, but it was a nice change after an afternoon of hearing it referred to as haunted, creepy and demonic.

He sighed with relief as he checked "wiring" out of his notebook. Ah, notebooks. He loved them almost as much as history books. There was something so charming about a simple spiral pad of paper, all blank and empty and waiting to be filled up. They were quite receptive to new ideas, and rarely argued or fussed about what sort of thoughts you shared with them. Not contrary creatures, notebooks.

He had a green storage tote steadily becoming filled with them. He had one or two for every house he renovated. The opening pages were always filled with technicalities; cost list, budgets, dimensions of the house; really just the nuts and bolts of flipping. It was deeper into their pages where things got interesting. Each had a catalogue of the items he'd found, sold or kept. Solid gold pocket watches, portraits so old even their frames were dropping to pieces. Jewelry boxes carved from ivory, sometimes with tiny keepsakes still stored inside. Letters were always his favorite to find, and many notebooks had photocopied printouts of what he'd discovered.

But so far in this journal he had only his checklist, budget, estimated profit and the brief history he knew. He flipped to the first page, looking over it.

The home had been built some 150 plus years ago and housed a single family for only a short time; the family of five had moved very suddenly in the late 70's, clear out of England. After that it housed a much grander family of over a dozen, and had thus been expanded.

The history was disappointingly dull to Cooper. Bought by the city in 1910. rented or later bought by a family in 1912, 1920, 1953 and finally a single co ed in 1977.

"How dull," Cooper said with remorse as he closed the book. He preferred more colorful weary (and hungry) he gave his hair another ruffle to dislodge the last dregs of cobweb, polished his silver-framed glasses on the last clean spot on his shirt and grabbed his wallet, intent on taking a walk for pizza.

As he walked through the great room, he paused. Though he didn't believe in spirits any more than he did the tooth fairy, he could understand why some would be so ready to call this place a home for lost souls. He never really got use to how quiet, how still these places were the first night. Everything shrouded in shadows and age, rooms usually empty, windows letting in ghoulish moans of wind, whipping the makeshift curtains…it could give anyone the willies. It wasn't the most comforting thing to wake up to in the middle of the night.

Cooper himself always found it more of a sad stillness than frightening. It was lonesome in this house, not for lack of company, for he desired little, but just overwhelming with the realization that there was no one left who could truly call this place home.

He looked up at the high vaulted ceiling, and the iron chandelier that still hung from it. Who forged it? Who hung it? Who polished these banisters and played on this hearth? To someone, to a family, this was their fortress, their shelter, and to see it fall to such ruins was melancholy. Ruins always filled him with a sense of beautiful unease, for all too soon it would be the home he'd grown in that would find itself desolate and left to rot. The schools he attended might someday he nothing but overturned desks and graffiti walls.

People often scoffed when he tries to share this bit of poetry with them, usually, he noted, out of unease. People of today, like all people, liked to think of themselves as permanent, important and unmoving. Their worlds would never fall, their landmarks would never rust from neglect and abandonment. But he always reminded them that's what every generation thought.

It unsettled him, but didn't frighten him. He'd be long dead before any disaster, mass migration or cataclysm rendered his world to that of a ghost town. He just hoped when it did happen, perhaps someone would care about his story as much as he cared about those who'd gone before him.

)o(

Footsteps again. Or was it footsteps still? When sleep came to call, time would always take its leave. They didn't get along very well, see. Sleep was bossy and insecure and wanted attention all on its self, with no care for time.

Footsteps still and then…silence. Familiarity so known that the previous noise was forgotten almost as soon as it stopped, as though it were nothing more but a fleeting daydream, a cat nap in summer heat.

Couldn't be though. Far too cold. Always cold.

He'd like to hear the footsteps again.


	3. Attics Are Scary Places

The great thing about such cavernous, empty houses (well, as though there was only one!) was the acoustics. In the early stages of each restoration it was nice to be able to pop his iPod into a set of speakers, crank the level to an audiologists nightmare and be able to enjoy his music through most of the house. Not having to set up his stereo or bother with catching his headphone wires on every knob and knuckle was a treat he'd loose once the house became adorned with the appropriate draperies and linens and furniture. Lovely to look at, but a real sound sucker.

Cooper enjoyed another bite of his pizza as he listened; Hawaiian, but not that it mattered, with the Biblical flood of garlic sauce he used to drown his dinner. Just another advantage to his mostly solitary life; no one to haggle him about his queer eating habits, no matter what it did to his breath.

He popped the last bite of crust into his mouth and savored it, reclining into the wall behind him. Having wanted a proper place to have his supper, he'd first blitzkrieged the kitchen and dining room, spending the afternoon with his shop broom and swifer, the right-hand men that usually lived at his main storage locker in town.

The scent of roast ham and garlic mingled…interestingly with lemon Pledge, but he'd grown use to the smell of his day one tradition. On a built in shelf across the room his speakers filled the warm evening with a highly tuned synthesizer, a comforting sound so distinctly 80's. Surrounded by a blend of his modern preferences and historic tastes, Cooper felt as much home in this filthy manor as he did in the Midwest.

Despite the noise, there was peace.

It wasn't that Cooper was a hermit, or even anti-social. He had made his share of friends this side of the pond, and even casually dated every few weekends. He looked forward to travelling back home every Christmas to enjoy a week of food, fruitcake and family bonding. Even among his students, some up to twenty years younger than him, he was lively and social. Yes, company was nice, but he felt a desire for it only in small, isolated instances. A night playing pool and telling increasingly raunchy (and increasingly fabricated) stories with his friends, and he could return to his mostly solitary life content for the week. He just enjoyed the quiet, the calm days he had before having to return to school, and always had. Often times he'd sleep till noon or later and stay up till 6 am to work in the most still hours God had to offer him.

He chuckled to himself as he broke down the greasy pizza box. Up at all hours and sleeping when the superstitious neighbor kids came to spy on him. The fact that he'd leave each house with more fodder for their ghost stories gave him a somewhat satisfied feeling. He hadn't realized it the first few, but once he became aware of what it must look like, a foreign man purchasing the local haunt, lights on at midnight, strange sounds…no wonder people were so afraid of these places!

Peering outside the still curtainless windows, Cooper could see the faintest dusting of pink still holding fast to the horizon. Still so early, but his body begged for sleep. Pushing 40, he wasn't exactly youthful Gray was cropping up in his hair in patches now, and he knew all the sawing, hauling and heavy lifting he did was all that stood between him and a beer belly. Though despite his advancement towards middle age, for tonight Cooper would blame his weariness on the long travel of the day.

For now, he would sleep on a mattress topper and a sleeping bag; honestly, people must think he was a lost hiker on the train here, with all that rolled atop his bulbous backpack. He scribbled in his journal, cleaned his teeth with bottled water and clicked off his battery light and music, allowing sleep to claim him easily.

And finally, truly, there was peace.

This is how he preferred it.

This one in his home, it was a noisy thing. Heavy footfalls echoed up and down every flight of stairs and seemed to be drawn to only the squeakiest of loose floorboards. The way it barged through the home, all awkward elbows and thumping cupboard doors!

The noise it played was nearly as unbearable, some unnatural screeching and twanging that would be incomprehensible as music were it not for the vague rhythmic time it kept. He could still feel the unsettling vibrations plaguing the air. It was rough, violent, and wholly uncomfortable. The entire feel of the house was changing.

He shouldn't be surprised though, and truly he wasn't. Nor was he much riled. They came at times, sometimes seldom and sometimes one after another. A few brought their belongings as though intending to take up residence here, though that never lasted long. But most as of late came baring nothing but odd looking lanterns and what may well be the strangest looking cameras he'd ever laid eyes upon. These youngest visitors never lasted till morning's light before they ran shrieking like children half their already small ages.

He drifted. He hadn't the strength to travel much on his own accord. He really didn't have the need lately. His sanctuary was all he needed, a swaddling cloak of pitch and soundless sleep.

He wished to sleep again. The thoughtless ease of it drew him back so appealingly, but he knew he wouldn't find it now. Not now that he was drifting, weightless, through the calm currents blowing through the windows and wall cracks. And certainly not with this visitor caught in his own slumber. Though he didn't dream anymore, this man lying on his kitchen floor was more captivating than anything that happened while asleep.

He seemed clever enough to find refuge in a corner free of flowing air and cold drafts; he stilled once he drew near the stranger, no wind to billow him about. Even then his station there was tenuous at best. He was made of such little substance and so little existence even that he had a tendency to just sort of…evaporate, he supposed. Simply fade into darkness for a time before waking back up in his favorite spaces and corners, often too weak to even fancy another "stroll".

Hoping this would not be the case at present, he kept his eyes trained on this man, glad that he could still identify him by gender. Often it was so hard to tell anymore. It seemed as though everyone looked the same to him; well, what scantily few people he did see. No, he was definitely male, looking perhaps a decade older than himself. A man of modest build and unremarkable height, he wasn't much of anything to look at, though he wasn't altogether a bother to look at. His dark hair brushed against his temples messily, at an awkward length he thought either needed a trim or to grow out a good deal.

So much more of the same. Unusual haircut, the most curious possessions scattered about in garish colors and made from things he couldn't identify, all tossed around with food he had no name for. More of the uncomfortable crackle in the air; how he hated the nervous energy that outsiders brought into his calm little world! He felt it as though he was part of the very current it flowed through, which he assumed he may well be. Sleep was next to impossible, with these changes just begging for his attention.

He snored, and shuffled in an otherwise calm sleep. Despite all the discomfort he carried around him, something was different with this one. Where others had smuggled themselves in under the cover of night or at least at its cusp, here this man sauntered in broad daylight, seeming to have no qualms about making himself a trespasser. Yet really, if he was to be honest (and honesty meant little to him after all this time) he would admit that though his brazenness was unwelcome, otherwise he had kept very neatly to his own business. Unlike the children who tore hellacious from room to room, seeking something, this one simply swept and scrubbed and wrung and dusted as though he were a maid.

He had no use for a tidy house, but he supposed if it contented him, it would be no harm. Surely he would leave soon as everyone did…but as he unrolled an odd sort of coverlet and crawled inside, he could see that wouldn't be the case, at least not presently.

He pursed his lips in what might have been a scowl if he tried; he looked like he was getting comfortable.

He was still bemusing the odd intentions of this older man as the shadows and summer winds swept forward to cradle him, luring back into the crevices and cracks where he belonged, and his own sleep overtook him before he could ponder another thought.

)o(

A week passed quickly, Coopers always-busy hands rarely having a spare moment to check the time. Most days the only clock he encountered was not the one around his wrist but his internal clock, prompting him when to have lunch, when to sleep and when he absolutely must wash something for the sake of human decency. Otherwise, he had little marker for the days passing. His tired brown eyes widened with a taste of shock when his phone informed him politely that it was already Thursday.

No wonder his family was always surprised he even turned up for holidays. The way he goes, they probably only vaguely wondered half the time if he was even still alive.

Well, he was. He was aching, starved and down to his last pair of socks, but he was alive and grinning with satisfaction for the end of his most productive day yet. Better yet, he had running water, a new heating tank and electricity in six rooms. His men-for-hire may have been a mixed back of candy-asses and overly curious busybodies, but at least they were eager to work (though whether they were eager to get here and see such a famous place up close, or eager to get the fuck out and run home crying, he wasn't sure. Nor did he care much, really, so long as he finally got a hot shower.)

He groaned appreciatively at just the thought. He hadn't had a real bath in 8 days! As was part of the downfall of moving into houses usually occupied by hobos; one often had to give up such luxuries as daily hygiene for a while. Every time he always was questioned why he didn't simply wait until after the house was wired and watered, but it was a simple concept. He would always ask the men, in return, if they would rather crawl around with the spiders, soot and inch of dust, or if they'd prefer cleaner work environment. That usually settled it. Despite the drawbacks, it was truly more convenient to have a quick move in, especially considering the cost of travel from his apartment.

Another groan, this time in a somewhat comedic loss. He sometimes missed his little apartment, with the too-low ceilings and odd kitchen appliances and bathroom fixtures. The Brits were weird, that's all he could say, but it had been home to him for almost 20 years now. Well…on and off.

This was home now, till he got it painted and primped and sold. And right now home was finally free of toolboxes and cussing men.

With a rather flaming flourish, Cooper crossed "waterline" off of his notebook list, satisfied to know the final major I-can't-do-this-on-my-own project was out of the way. He'd need a bath later, considering his current plans.

He smiled, rubbing his stubble contemplatively as he stared toward the ceiling; it was finally time to tackle the attic.

He'd discovered the doorway to the uppermost level in a truly Narnian fashion, poking around the back of a guest rooms closet. By the awkward and cheep paneling, he'd guess it had once been surely a back part of the walkway that had been remodeled to give the floor more living space, and they deemed the attic uneeded. Not too uncommon, really, considering he expected to find it used as little more than storage.

From his cooler (How he longed for a fridge!) he grabbed a bottled water and the flashlight from his ragtag nightstand. He also pocketed a Swiss knife, dust rag and spare batteries, being far too lazy at present to be bothered going downstairs for more.

As he climbed the main staircase, the half rotted boards once again threatened to break way beneath his feet, or at least irritate him into a good oiling. He couldn't imagine the attic steps could be in any better repair.

True to form, as he opened the door he had serious second thoughts about risking his spinal cord on those steps. They looked precariously solid, though he couldn't be for sure with the cricket graveyard it was housing. The little vermin acted like a leggy little carpet and Cooper really didn't care to hear them snapping underfoot. He wasn't especially fond of bugs, but he'd developed a sort of tolerance to his constant room mates. Hadn't bought a house yet that didn't come complete with his own party of termites or spiders. Still, he cringed as he tip toed up the stairs, trying to keep to the surely sturdier edges near the walls, and prayed if the planks gave way underneath him, than the banister (and his reflexes) were both in better shape.

He toed aside cricket corpses, both to get the little vermin out of his path and to get a look at the wood underneath, to spot mold before he sank into it. Dry and brittle bodies made hardly a sound as they tottered over the edge of each step, but the soft scuttling and scraping was enough to bring a sickly tinge to the back of Cooper's throat.

"At least they're not alive," he told himself steadily as he reached the crest of the staircase. It was all he could do to not imagine the massacre he'd just passed all resurrecting into hopping, chirping little insecti-zombies.

Definitely spending too much time listening to the locals, he thought, and tried to put bugs from his mind.

He gave a final shudder and prayed that this journey into nightmare fuel would be worth it. Too many times, he thought as he fumbled with the catch-all key ring the realtor had given him far too eagerly last weak, have I dug through hot as hell attics and not have a single thing to show for it.

The first key failed to fit the slot, no matter which way he turned it, so he selected a smaller one next.

He had a right to be a little perturbed at the lack tangible reward; as much as he loved preservation and restoration, it wasn't a safe job, especially once he got back to this era. Wallpaper and paints just coated with lead and arsenic were but the start of his health-hazard woes. Fabric dyes were saturated in all sorts of poisons and chemicals to produce a desired vibrancy, and more added to keep them colored as such. Coupled with the gas fumes and backwater medical knowledge, and he was often surprised anyone lived past childhood. Such a dangerous and harsh time to live.

So why did he love it so…?

..All the same, the risks in this particular home were low, thanks to the decades of updating done before he ever set foot in London. No need for haz-mat suits this time, he thought with a grin as he rug for another key.

CLUNK. Finally, the fourth key and a little elbow grease was what was needed to move the lock, though he could hear the grinding of dirt (and probably more bugs) trapped in the mechanics. Great, more detailing. He made a note to stock up on Q-tips.

'And fans!' he added mentally with a grimace; the heat from the attic swamped him as the heavy door lurched open, and he swore he could already feel it beading on his brown and the back of his neck. English Summers may not be the heat waves of his childhood, but after a more familiar English winter, it was still scorching.

Off came his shirt the moment he stepped in, the faded blue number tossed over a lampshade to be dealt with later; his t shirt was much cooler and more suited to filthy attic work.

He stood in the center of the deeply sloping room and took a few minutes to survey, his body already sending up warning aches at the work soon to come. Scores of boxes lined every wall so deeply that he couldn't even say what the walls looked like; the only paneling to be seen was on the angled ceilings, and even those were hard to make out through the soot. The fact that all five windows were boarded up and let only the narrowest streams of sunlight through wasn't of any help either.

With only a few moments of abuse, his flashlight sparked to life, filling the dim room with a bright yet acidic yellow light. He'd have to unbind the windows if he was to properly see what he was sorting…but he'd have to dig to them first.

Coopers whole demeanor softened as he turned a slow circle and let the light wash across each surface he neared. SO many little wooden crates mixed in with heavy cardboard boxes, all jammed up against the walls. What little gaps and space couldn't be filled where closed up with jewelry boxes and rolled carpets, headboards, curtain rods and a junk shop's supply of picture frames, most of them mournfully empty. It was like a masterfully played game of Tetris, where the L's all appeared at the perfect moments.

His beam skitted upwards, bringing candelabras into the light, festooned with spider webs like gauze, solidifying more than ever the atmosphere of a Halloween mansion. Even higher the flashlight crept, and he spied the rotted remains of window valances and shutter hinges among the cheap plywood covers, with a gasolier crowned the room in a rusted guild that had lost so much of its grandeur.

Cooper was most definitely, certainly, in his happy place.

A fast jog downstairs to search for his toolbox and a few electric lanterns, and grab another water and he was ready to make a date with the attic. He liked his little reproduction lanterns; they were much brighter than he would expect of the kerosene equivalent it was mimicking, but still cast an amber glow, a softened and comforting light with none of the harshness of fluorescent 100 watters. They were hung from their hooks in the rafters and set on small tables, and created the perfect ambiance for a treasure hunt; by the time he managed to reach the windows, it would be too late in the day for the weakened sunlight to provide much illumination to the dim corners.

So he began hauling the nearest boxes down into the brightest collection of light, his ever-ready pen knife slicing through duct tape and string far easier than his fingernails could. He was disappointed, but not too surprised, when one after another turned up nothing but t shirts and team jerseys and boxers and other such cheaply made clothing, so old and caked with dirt that donating them would have been an insult to the destitute. Hell, most of these he wouldn't even use for rags.

Yet more clouds of dust billowed into the air as he tossed one garment after another over his shoulder to collect in an abandoned corner, to be thrown out when he got around to hauling up a trash bag. The few that would serve the higher calling of chair polisher or floor buffer were sent to live in a now empty box.

Cooper expected this really, from a house that had seen its share of more recent tenants. He was sure that among the remaining parcels he would find sneakers, hooded jackets and some sort of horribly outdated home décor. The last renter had left mid seventies (screaming for her life, the rumors said) and left everything she owned, refusing to go back for it. Her boyfriend, he'd been told, had been sent in to retrieve her necessities, but so much had been left as a happy bonus for whoever next purchased this property.

However, he well knew that there had been no one to benefit from the grad students mod couch and beanbag chairs except the mice that has surely made comfy nests among the foam pellets. The house had been boarded up, citing "necessary repairs" that were never completed, and thus was how Cooper was finding it. While many rooms had a mournful and eerie sense of abandonment, the majority had been at least haphazardly packed away. He shuddered to think about what random, personal effects he could find in a box. Women's razors, foot powder, fetish costumes; all had been hiding in houses he'd hutted, surely the result of the Remove Drawer, Dump Into Box method of storage.

Fortunately for Cooper and his sensibilities about finding personal lubricants stuffed in socks, someone seemed to have at least takes time to gather what they wanted. Six boxes in and he had a wonderful collection of nothing, with a bit of worthless junk thrown in.

Both his floorboards and his knees creaked as Cooper hunched back on his ankles; the attic was stifling hot as the late afternoon sun beat down on the roof. Even his waterbottles were beginning to loose their frost. He guzzled half down all the same, relishing anything wet down his pipe, and splashed a palmful through his hair.

Although he always expected the worst, it was still frustrating to think that such a lovely old house might not have any, well…trinkets. Cooper liked trinkets! Porcelains and fern prints and brooches were much easier to collect that sideboards and armoires; the space was a total killer. And besides, what he didn't care to keep would simply return money in his pocket and a very merry Christmas.

He took another swallow and started an internal pep talk. He was less than a dozen boxes through at least fifty, and anything truly worth finding would be in the back, or more likely, those trunks!

His knife was soon sticky with eroded tape gunk and bug remains, giving his new rags a temporary mission in life, as he sliced through box after box. He actually chuckled with relief when he unpacked a cotton candy circle skirt, a truly nauseating color but distinctively fifties. The clock was going further! And there, a dated set of nightgowns, an assortment of retro (and naturally hideous, in his opinion) glasses, shoes and scarves; worth a bit, perhaps, and of zero interest to himself. Perhaps the next box…or the next…

He squealed like a preteen when he uncovered the phonograph, for it was a handsome sight indeed. He'd known what it was the moment he saw its ghostly form outlined under the sheet it was draped with, the large tulip bell completely unmistakable. He brought the linen up carefully, not wanting to knock his discovery crashing onto the floor.

It was a beauty. The wood was worn and had lost most of its stain, but the simple, sturdy carvings on it's box remained for the most part. The brass horn was tinged with brown stain, a tarnish he was instantly sure he could polish out with time. With building excitement, he forgot everything else in the attic. He used the most cautious touch to pull back the arm, listening to creaking and grinding from the inevitable rust and wasn't disappointed. Q tips would be his friend here.

Cooper instantly began to look for some indication of who crafted this treasure; a Victor, no doubt, but it was so externally wore he couldn't be sure of the model. No Victrola, not with that prominent funnel. All the same, an expert could surely put a name to the machine. And a price, though with a smile Cooper shook his head, not sure if he's pawn this one. He blew the dirt gently from the disc set but only managed to displace a loose layer. If he could fix it into working order, he may not be able to part with it.

This, he thought to himself as he carried the music machine to an out of the way corner, is definitely what I was hoping for.

)o(

He couldn't say for how long he slept. Did it matter, really? He recalled that at one time he'd mark his slumber with hours, with morning sun and evening stars, or a mid day heat if he was remarkably fortunate. Now though sleep wasn't what it had once been to him. He didn't drift off out of necessity, nor for pleasure. Instead, it just…was. He never felt to tug of drowsiness prompting him to settle, but sort of just fell to unconsciousness. Light or dark, those were his only markers, and right now the sun was spilling through the gaps in the4 attic walls, but very weakly; the lanterns strung across the room provided more light than did the sun.

The lanterns were odd but bewitching. They glowed with no candle, as though electric, but possessed no cord! Oil, he initially thought, or kerosene, but there was no flame whatsoever.

Ah, he couldn't bring himself to invest much interest in lanterns, not with That Man making such a fuss. He couldn't recall any of the others tearing through boxes and cupboards with as much vigor as this one, and he wondered vaguely what it was that he was searching for. There was very little of value here that he could recall, and what did have nice prices was the furniture, mostly.

Yet here he was, digging through piles of distasteful smocks and rags; he was rather pleased to see that his guest seemed as offended by those hideous articles as he himself was. Servants clothing wasn't even as ill-made! Surely they must be costumes, to play act as peasants. Foreign peasants with bad taste. French, perhaps.

He thought lightly about the warm sun outside, and wondered how long he'd napped, and more pressing, how long this man had been rummaging through his home. Hell, living in his home. A dozen times longer than the rest, he was sure, though he could almost recall longer stays, but those recollections were muddied and dull and not worth probing. With little sense of time came little care for its passing; what happened before seemed so long ago, and he couldn't say he had much mind for what was yet to come. All that mattered was this strange and determined visitor, and this growing fascination with his peculiar mannerisms.

He couldn't' say he was particularly interested in him. No, it was more the fact that he was there that had his attention, rather than anything specific about him. While it was true that something about him was particularly unique, he didn't really care. Unique was just another word that had lost its meaning. In a sense, everyone was unique to him; he, who passed light and dark, cycle after cycle, in the quiet shell of this house.

To one who existed so long in the darkness, every ray of light was dawn.

)o(


	4. Pretty Little Melodies

Cooper's evening faded seamlessly into night, and finally into the earliest hours of the morning, but the professor paid little notice to the time. The dial of his watch wasn't as important as the years within these trunks, a much more fascinating time to mind than 12:02. What hour it was outside mattered very little to him as he unearthed one treasure after another. The phonograph was only the start of his finds; once he had the delicate contraption safely tucked away in a corner, he started on the boxes it had shielded with gusto, knowing now that he was definitely getting to the meat of the attic. True to his instincts, a velvet lined hatbox high on a stack nestled within its soft interior a ladies riding hat. The plume was bent but fixable.

With a smile, and delicate hands, he admired the caps fine craftsmanship and mentally calculated whether or not this was a restoration he could tackle on his own. It would require such gentle cleaning, probably with chemicals he didn't possess. Definitely a professionals job.

The men's morning coat he found next just needed a few buttons, though, and a few seams mending on the Sunday dress. Box after box opened to lovely clothes, slippers, hand stiched wall scrolls, watercolors and gloves. Still more contained infant's gowns, bonnets with more ruffles than their mothers own skirts and the tiniest little girl's frocks. A family surely had been living here, not long before the turn of the century by the looks of these fashions.

Cooper neither noticed nor minded the thick smog the attic was now harboring. He was in his happy place, without a doubt, as he delved further towards the wall he knew had to be close. He had to dig past a dressmakers dummy to get there though, plus a tin of buttons, and a music box that played no music. He soon had a brass cornered trunk full of books, diaries and letters to spend a weekend devouring, as well as a renewed and familiar sense that he was, indeed, the luckiest bastard in Britain. He was sure through another's eyes he would look more like the country's biggest creep, what with single him spending a night alone digging through women's bloomers and corsets, but that perception rather tickled him actually. How easily his hobby could be tweaked through the right perception and look more like behavior common to stalkers

He couldn't really spare much emotion to care, though. He never had. Cooper had always been the sort to just play his own damn kazoo. No other sort of man could just pack up his life, move to another continent and live his somewhat unorthodox dream relatively solo. Sure, he had his friends and students, colleagues he greatly enjoyed being around, but they were privy only to his public life. Apart from his closest family, his private life truly was…private.

It was a testiment to his content personality that he scarcely grew lonely in these great, empty houses. Loneliness didn't haunt him like the ghosts so many claimed he lived with; even when it did, it was not a personal emotion. The loneliness Cooper often felt was a collective one, and not unfamiliar. He could feel his emotions flirting with it right now.

Though he found such delight in these little turn of the century relics, he couldn't deny the overpowering sense of loss they held. To most people he supposed such things as what he held were nothing more than footnotes in history books, or fodder for costume balls. They were novelties, a part of history to perhaps model for its décor, or architecture, but suitable for no other mimicry. After all, this was such a "dark" time in history to most, backwards and prudent and laughably unenlightened. To Cooper, though? It was something so different.

A tall, narrow box was more than enough to distract him from the arms of melancholia. It bore such an unusual shape, in comparison to the others, that his interest was more than piqued. It was made from simple pine and held no decoration, but the watertight sealant it was stained with showed it must harbor something of value.

And oooh did it. Once the latch came undone with a creak, he found the flat box to be full of photographs, and he was positively beside himself. For someone who longed desperately for a connection to the 19th century, few things built a bridge as sound as photographs.

With the utmost care, he slipped the small stack from the box, lying them atop the trunk he'd just rummaged through. There were maybe a dozen prints, seemingly in decent shape for the most part. The first was Edwardian, of a very pretty middle class woman; from what he knew about the homes history, she was probably the wife of whoever first owned the house after it was claimed by the city. He doubted he'd find any images of the residents just prior to her, but who could say? He'd found a picture of a prostitute before.

He sat the image down delicately next to him, to study the next. He placed the mother and child at perhaps the 1870's or early 80's, judging mostly by the mothers dress, but the faded ink eroded many of the details. The child was a boy by his guess, but not being yet breeched it was difficult to tell. All small children of the time wore gown and frills. Funny, though. He looked old enough for short trousers.

The family portrait he found was the largest, and certainly had been the pride of the drawing room. Mid Victorian, 60's at earliest, and probably the builders of this home.

He sighed peacefully as he studied each little member of the family, the youngest a baby sleeping in his mothers arms.. Almost easy to forget they were dirt poor and living well above their means. He wondered how their clothing would show their wear in person, if those colors were as starched and white as the grainy photograph would present. He doubted it.

He flipped to the next, a seated portrait of a handsome man, perhaps 20, with an older gentleman behind him. The younger had pale hair, much longer than was in fashion for...what…late 80's? early 90's? Somewhere in that area. Pity their faces always looked so somber and pinched; he would have likely been rather a charmer with a smile.

Cooper cross-referenced to the family portrait; two were fair haired, and he wondered which of the younger boys grew into this one. Whoever it was had obviously at least attempted to surmount his upbringing; this wasn't a workhouse orphan for sure. He doubted it was the child of the other portrait, for he (if he was a he) looked sickly, and clung to his mother's dress to sit up. Most likely hadn't made it another year.

A small bundle of soldier's photo's would be sure to delight the local WWII monument, and he was pleased to actually see names jotted at the bottom of some fifties era birthday memories; perhaps he could track down any remaining family.

"The stories you could tell me," he murmured softly to the mother and child as he slid them back into their box with care. He popped his neck satisfying as he did so, and checked his watch. The dial read quarter to four in the morning, and Cooper immediately felt the time weigh on his body. It was a testimate to his lifestyle, that a piece of foam on a cold floor could sound so inviting.

He was satisfied enough with the days digging, and one by one he clicked off his lanterns, gathered his empty water bottles and headed downstairs for another nights rest. Within minutes he was asleep, deeply, peacefully, and never even heard the snapping sound of splintering wood 3 stories above him.

)o(

"What in God's name-!"

He found it easily enough in the morning though. He'd gone upstairs with a large cup of coffee (aaah, the blessings of hot water!) and a bagel, intent on sorting out yesterdays junk, only to find the lovely wooden box shattered. Splinters of dyed pine covered the floor, and he nearly jammed a nail up his foot before swerving in time to knock into the dressmakers dummy instead.

He regained his balance, but even after the vertigo passed he couldn't process what he was seeing. The box was demolished; this wasn't just a case of a breeze tipping it over the edge of the trunk…or rather…he didn't think…

Cooper crouched down and picked a larger chunk from the floor and tested it's pliancy. Though of sturdy build, the wood itself was brittle with age. He sighed and dropped the board. It was possible, he supposed…the attic was drafty…so if the wind had picked up while he slept it could have been enough to tip the box, scatter the splinters, the pictures…

The pictures!

Oh, they were there. Scratched and scuffed and strewn to all corners of the attic, but they were there.

"Sonofabitch!" Cooper swore. He picked each print off the floor and gave it a gentle shake to remove the worst of the splinters. He ticked each one off as he collected them. War vet, family...where was the- there it was! He found the birthday party under the dressmakers dummy, along with the handsome blond. The mother and pale toddler had slid across the floor, stopped by a junk box.

Once all were accounted for, Cooper sighed, giving a gentle puff of breath to the family atop the pile in his hands. A gentle cloud of dust rose in a grimy gray puff disappearing seamlessly into the attic haze. Such a pity; these portraits were already so faded with age, sun damage, and the teeth of tiny rodents. A tumble across ragged wood floors was the last thing they needed. A professional, sealed framing is what needed done, something to seal out the moisture. He already had a nice collection of them adorning the walls of his stairways and study. Or rather, would, once he finished those areas. Architectural work was one thing. Now it was painting and papering and covering every flat surface with clocks and bells and ferns.

A bottom drawer in his soon-to-be-bedroom would do nicely to store them until he could properly see to them. He'd be here long enough. Usually he spent at least 6 months in a house after it was complete, to thoroughly enjoy his little project before selling it. Besides, he thought the scents of cooking and laundry were much more homey than the noxious mix of wallpaper paste and carpeting tape that would cling in the air for weeks. A client interested in museum fair might not give a damn, but bed and breakfast folk seemed to prefer Downey to tile putty.

Several undershirts and boxers found a new home in a cupboard to make room for the portraits. As he slid the door back into place, he sighed, knowing a mess awaited him up in the attic. Well…there had been a mess anyway, one comprised of his own flippant tossing of garments, as well as years of spider's toiling in the rafters, and dear Mother Mary knows how many rats had been born into those corners. However, those were always part of the home. Rotted floorboard, outdated wiring, and rodents who'd crawl up to his bed at night all, Hi there, thanks for the Cheeto crumbs. I'm going to go have babies in your beauro now, thanks.

No, it was the shattered box that he wasn't looking forward to sweeping up. Not because it was a drearily laborious task, as it would take only a few minutes to sweep up the splinters. It was more the fact that he had to. He should know better than to leave valuables where they could fall prey to the elements. These items hadn't been moved in God only knew how long. In this attic, with no climate control, they'd been prey to the elements, summer's heat and humidity. They needed to be treated with better care. The box may have been plain, but still. A pound was a pound was a dollar, damn it! He needed to pay bills somehow, and fixing these houses wasn't cheap. They paid off, several times over, in the long run, but he didn't feel like living off instant noodles till then. Not again.

In actuality, a day cleaning the attic turned out to be quite relaxing. He swept up the largest of the splinters first, ones large enough to ram up a shoe if he were to be so unlucky (and several stitches on the most unlikely of locations proved he often was.) However, that was as far as he got before he just couldn't help himself. That lovely old music machine seemed to be in such lovely condition. He just had to have a closer look.

Oh it wasn't a true Victorian model; he never even thought that to be a possibility, but it was an early 1900's model. 20's, maybe. Not his area of expertise.

He looked about the attic, and the slew of socks and linens and piles of dust that filled every crack, then back to the phonograph. He knew he should work on the attic. He could all but hear his mother's voice screeching at him to clean his room before he even thought about going out to play.

…Well. Good thing he was a big boy now, and Mommsy was a thousand miles away in Nebraska. And off he went merrily, to forage for Q tips.

)o(

Oh the racket that came tumbling out of the attic was something he could scarcely call music. At least, not by his own tastes, and he was a gentleman of high breeding. Well, theoretically. He was sure genetics and upbringing had a far greater weight on one's palette than whether or not one's father allowed him his last name. He'd been immersed in culture, attended the opera, the symphony, the orchestra even, and knew truly good music. What this visitor was playing, however, was not to his liking. The wavering voice that crooned from the player's bell hit surrounded him with a foreign twang, not pleasant at all.

He wished he could cover his ears and turn away, but the thick, dusty air of the attic steps seemed to hold him within its sticky, murky arms. No air seemed to gust through, no drafts. So there he was, stuck listening to a very pompous, upbeat sounding woman croon something about her boy overseas. Well. He'd go over seas too, if it was to escape a lady who sounded like THAT. He didn't care much for women in the best of times, let alone one's who couldn't demurely keep their mouths closed, thank you.

However, his room mate seemed to be quite enamored with the tune. Or at least, with the phonograph playing it. What a queer model; no cylinder that he could see. Just a charcoal black disc turning scratchily along a table.

He was all but sulking in that narrow passage, where he'd been for quite some time. Through the open doorway, he could see that man idle away his entire afternoon on that thing. He'd left for quite some time, only to return with a veritable arsenal of cotton wipes and astringents and sharpened dowels. All, it seemed, with the purpose of shining the player back up to a working order. He'd almost prefer him going back to that loud, thumping drumset he seemed so fond of.

Still, he found it difficult to really be too peeved. His sheer fascination with his guest buffered his horrid taste in music. Even when shuffling along humiliatingly with a tailor's maniquin, he couldn't bare to look away. He was almost glad the breezes of early evening hadn't ferried him away to more quiet corners of his house, where he'd have only bug carcasses for company. He wasn't much for socializing, but one really did grow weary of staring at locust shells for hours.

Besides, he would probably be fading before long. A good long rest.

Before him, the man was shuffling through a deep box, one far too clean to be from these attics. He'd seen him carry it in from before, when he'd arrived from wherever he'd spent his day. More of those large black saucers, some covered in big, colorful wrappings. One by one he took them from the box, gave them a quick examination, and rejected each based on some merit unseen to his own eyes. He was rather surprised when he finally hopped from the floor and removed the long arm from the disc, only to replace it with this new one.

He cringed from his darkly shadowed waiting place, ready for more of the former drudgery to continue. Instead, as the bell hissed with dead air, he found he'd been awaiting not another trumpet-laden patriotic theme, but rather a march of strings all but thrusting from the brass, tapering off into a softer melody. He could all but see the musicians bows darting across their instruments like humming birds. This, this was familiar to him, something much more suiting.

"Carl Nielson," he heard the man read from the back panel of a slipcover. Something tugged the back of his mind. Ah, yes. He recalled hearing this symphony before. For a moment, the walls of the staircase seemed to turn to richly strewn red velvet. He could almost smell the hot, heady fumes of the gas lamps…but quick as the wavering mirage had come to his mind, so it was rushed away like the tides.

The visiting man seemed to enjoy the welling tune as much as he did. Good. Perhaps his preferences of music might improve.

)o(

Cooper spent another evening cleaning, trying to get the attic in working order, though it wasn't a high priority. He'd surely be using it again for storage as he decorated the place. However, having things in some semblance of order set his mind at ease. Besides, cleaning was pleasant enough with a lovely orchestra in the background. His own personal collection was a hodgepodge of decades, but nice enough to listen to. He couldn't believe that thing actually worked…quality was crap, but had a fair sort of charm to it. He didn't take the arm from the turntable until late, where he decided to finally take ten minutes to call back home.

He didn't much like this. Oh he loved his mom, he did, but she was a little…well…

)o(

His calling card rapped against the floorboards, and his eyes wandered skywards wearily as he listened to his mother rattle on. Whatever it was was 6 pounds and took 14 hours, so either he had a new nephew or his aunt was back to her Amish bread baking phase.

"Yes mom…yeah…yeah I'm eating. Oh yeah, course. Very healthy. Plenty of fruits and veggies." To prove his point, he took a relishing bite of his quick-stop taco, a glob of sour cream and hot sauce snaking down his lip. "Crunching? No, that was a carrot stick, mom."

His dear mom couldn't be convinced that he was 38 and was not going to keep growing big and strong if he ate all his peas. Just like he couldn't convince her that no, mom, my living in Europe is not going to make me nobility, metrosexual or develop a taste for crumpets. He didn't even know what a crumpet was.

He let her carry on about the importance of eating well at his age, as he added another sour cream packet to his chicken taco.

He wandered as he ate, never one to be able to sit and chat, not over the phone at least. He wandered across the second floor, tidying up the largest plaster pieces by towing them into a pile to sweep up later.

He'd just crunched into another bite of greasy poultry bliss when a thrumming melody reached him from the stairway, and he dropped his pseudo-Mexican meal in shock.

"Will? William?" came the tinny voice of his mother, courtesy of phone card quality audio.

Cooper plucked the phone from the floor.

"Uh, Mom, I'll call ya right back…" he murmured, and clicked off the connection, filling his hand with a heavy flashlight instead. He really needed to invest in a baseball bat, if bastard children were going to be bursting into his house.

Oooh yes, he'd dealt with this before. He knew it the minute Carl Neilson's violins can rampaging from the attic. Not very loud, truthfully, with a player so old, but noises carried well in empty old houses.

"God damn kids," he muttered. He put up with pranks with every house, and the more lore around them, the worse it was. Oooh Halloween would be hell here.

He followed the scratchy record up to the attic, right where he knew it would be.

"Alright you brats, get your asses out here. I don't scare easy, but I'm sure you would as soon as I call the cops." His voice easily overpowered the music, even as he opened the attic door.

There was the phonograph, just as he'd left it, with the switch on and the record turning, filling the air with a late Victorian symphony.

But no children to be seen.

Wary of a teenagers lack of boundaries, he closed the door behind him carefully, and swept his flashlight through the attic, listening for laughter, the chortles of a prank well played, but heard nothing but a cello.

Cooper sighed, and went to switch the record player off, and sweep the arm aside.

Inch by inch he prowled the attic, beating every box with his flashlight in hopes of startling any hiding children out into the open. However, all he managed to scare up were dust bunnies and moths, neither of which he could guess had much to do with the music. Atop of that, the windows to the attic were all still securely boarded up, meaning the only way in or out was through the narrow stairs behind him.

"Anyone who was here would be long gone.." he reasoned with himself, but he knew better. He wouldn't be able to rest until he searched under every rub in this house. He doubted the offender could flatten themselves to a slip of paper, but hey. He'd seen too many sci fi movies as a kid.

Nothing. Top to bottom, even down to the freezing basement, there was no sign of anyone. The only thing out of place was his poor chicken taco, a casualty of this war. And it was a good taco too.

Ah well. All he could do was double check the locks on his doors, and hope he could scrub the spicy red bloodstain off his wood floor in the morning.

Cooper went around to check his locks one more time, brushed his teeth, and crawled into…mattress, promising to finally assemble furniture tomorrow. Beds were nice, if he remembered correctly.

)o(

A quiet gust of air outside his windows was all the sound that filled the house for most of the night. Past the earliest hours of morning's life, still shrouded in pitch darkness, not even Cooper's own sleep breathing rustled the still air.

But the phonograph did.

So softly the music poured through the house, soaking first the attic in it's enticing violins, letting the wavering strings ripple in waves down the stairs and seem through the floorboard, to drip and tickle against Cooper's ears. So quiet was the antique appliance that when he sat himself up in bedand blearily reached for his flashlight, he was aware first of the cold chill of the house, and only second of Carl Nielson's first symphony echoing through the home's empty, cavernous rooms.

Once he did, though, his skin felt all the more chilled. He locked the doors, he knew he did. He checked them like he was being paid for it. Windows too; those with glass were locked soundly, and those without were fixed with plywood. Surely he would have heard someone tearing down giant sheets of dead tree. Or picking his lock. Mr Nielson's composition surely couldn't be loud enough to stifle that, as well as someone creaking up those steps.

A hammer was his companion that night, the hand me down from his mother with the glittery handle. A sparkly death awaited whoever was prowling around his attic, if they didn't get the hell out.

He crept along the walls, his feet practically falling over themselves as he sidled on the most sturdy boards of the floor. Hugging corners and doorways, he almost felt as though Mission Impossible should be playing, and not a classic diddy from a long dead Victorian.

He wondered if the person upstairs could hear his heart pounding over the cello.

Each step threatened to cry beneath his weight, and give away his position. Oh Cooper knew he'd made a dreadful spy, and though he couldn't really care about how well he's excel in a mostly fiction profession, it was sheer sleuthing that might keep the mild mannered history professor alive tonight. Anyone who could slip in so silently had to know what they were doing, and houses like these sometimes drew in the crazies.

Hammer brandished, glinting as maliciously as a 90's relic could, he threw open the attic door.

There was no man in a white mask waiting for him. No chainsaws whirred in his face, and he felt no need to put the lotion in the basket.

All that met him in that attic was a Victor phonograph, scratchily spinning away at a record far older than he was.

The wind…he finally reasoned, noting the draft of the night. He'd have thought that the arm would be rusted with age, but he must have been a little too liberal with the oiling.

Sure enough, it took just a brush of a finger to swing the arm back in its place. Must not have clicked it into lock secure enough.

His heart started to settle down, his panic over. He reached down, and unplugged the ancient record player. It probably wasn't safe to leave such an old cord connected anyway.

…but it still couldn't hurt to check the house one more time. Just in case.

Once again, there was nothing. No point of entry. He was relieved, and laughed at himself as he crawled back under his blankets.

"Old houses are getting to ya, Will," he chided himself softly. He couldn't believe he was letting urban legends spook him.

Sleep claimed him easily, for William Cooper was not one to dwell on childhood fears. The boogey man couldn't live under your bed if you slept on the floor.


	5. Coin Collecting

William spent his day, not as a custodian, but as a security guard. Immediately upon finding the record spinning around and around beneath the arm, having obviously played itself through by a hand NOT his own, Cooper had taken up his trusty glittery hammer and prowled his home, on the off chance that whatever human vermin had crawled into his house might still be lurking around. Into closets and cubbies he poked his head, brandishing the claw side of the tool as though he were auditioning for a local production of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (and as though William Cooper could actually take a blunt object to someones face). Of course, there was nobody to be found, not in the boxes of the attic nor the recesses of the basement stairs or any of the floors in between. With everything still so sparsely furnished, it wasn't difficult to glance into an empty room and know that he and the spiders were quite peacefully alone.

Right, then. The little trespassers were smart enough to hoof it after playing their little prank. Bastards. Finally easing out his defensive panic, Cooper stored the hammer away grabbed a towel out of his linen cupboard and went to have a wash, grateful once more for the newly-installed water tank, and dressed brusquely before grabbing his keys and heading into town. He booked it to a home supply store, stopping at a Starbucks for a ham sandwich and caffeine, and spent an hour prowling the aisles and filling up a basket with hooks, chains, new door knobs, deadbolts and window latches. Honestly he was sure the woman at the checkout counter thought he was a completely paranoid loon, but he only sipped his Machiato and kept an even gaze as she rang up one home security apparatus after another. 

As soon as he got home and unlocked his front door, he grabbed his toolbox and began to dismantle the front door, the back door, and the side door out of the once-upon-a-kitchen. The realtor had swore that the house was far too old for anyone with a key to remember what the bloody hell said key was to, but SOMEONE had gotten into his house last night and the doors were, obviously, the most likely portal to their mischief, and he replaced each knob and installed a deadbolt lock to each one. Following this, he prowled the first floor, checking each and every window. A great number of them did not open, being plate glass built solidly into their frames, but many others did, often with great whining and protestations of rusted metal and warped wood. SURELY, he thought as each old frame received a stopper, he would have heard one of these slip open? He could he a heavy sleeper, sure, but in the dead silence of night-!

The second floor followed, the bedroom windows receiving the same treatment, especially ones that ran over the eaves and slants of roof below, and finally, he checked the attic a final time. SO many boxes were still crammed about, dozens of square feet of space crammed with bed frames and book cases and old scraps of lives long gone; could there be windows shrouded behind all this junk? It was a possibility, he supposed, but he could see the five he knew of; three in the front in an arch, one on either side, and he was quite certain there was no attic window in the back of the house. A sigh filled his longs, stirring the dust motes in front of him as it left his lips, and with a slight chill he side-eyed the phonograph. To know someone was here, might have crept just feet away from him as he slept...he was SURE it was just local kids playing pranks, of course, as this was hardly a new occurrence for him, but it was just a universally chilling thing to realize, and he was looking forward to keeping the little assholes OUT.

)o(

Sometimes, when Jezabel slept, it would be a day filled with songbirds and sunshine, and when he awoke once more, there would be a near meter of snow coating the grounds outside of his windows. So all-consuming were his bouts of silence, so enticing was the numb half-awareness of his coma. He really had no real concept of time anymore, hadn't for as long as he could recall, though this wasn't to say much- his memories as of late felt strangely scrambled and out of order, like pages of a spilt notebooks wafting down a flight of stairs, without the time to sort them again properly. All the information was there in front of him, but he had no idea how to order his recollections properly at all. Memories flitted into his mind with no reason at all, ideas he could not tell were a moment of his life, or something that had drug on for days. Hell, he could scarcely sort out his living memories from his dead.

Jezabel was fairly sure- almost certain- that he was very much dead. He had come to that conclusion, he thought, QUITE some time ago, but once again there was no way for him to gauge when, or how long ago it was. It just wasn't a very difficult conclusion to have reached is all. With no need for food or to bother with the physics of doors or walls or any other solid object, there truly was only one explanation, and that was that he had died. This thought was perhaps objectively horrifying but he had gotten his panic-fueled tantrum out his system already, probably years ago- decades ago?- and honestly, he was sure it had not lasted terribly long. Jezabel longed for death, he recalled THAT with a startling clarity, and while this wasn't exactly the numb, black oblivion he had hoped for, there was also no eternal torment of molten stone and boiling oil; he hadn't once caught a whiff of sulpher, so really things could be worse. Nothing...nothing really hurt now, most of the time. He was usually, it seemed, swaddled in a deep, dense mist, a cotton-wool cloak that kept out the harsh chill of the world, and he didn't seek to remove this buffer between him and everything around him. 

Jezabel Quinn Disraeli. He knew his name. This much, he clung to, trying to whisper it to himself in the unfathomable dark expanses of the basement at night, but very, very rarely did he manage to make a sound. Jezabel. Father named him, he knew this as well, but he often found he could recall no more on this front, and would instead find himself looped right back around to repeating his name within his heart. Jezabel. How long since he'd another say his name? Didn't matter. He had it, he knew it, he kept it close to him as a treasure- he liked treasures. There were a great many of them stored down with him in his crawlspace, his /home/. It was a small little alcove sat behind an old built-in wringer. Once used to store potatoes and butter and other things that needed to be kept cold, it was now Jezabel's perfect, personal little hide away. A crack in the bricks let in just enough light at times to illuminate a tiny patch of his home, and in it he could look over his collection. There were a few playing cards, the red diamonds and hearts faded now into the most anemic pinkish-orange there could be. A chess rook, the white one, kept the company of a small metal Scotty dog and, of all things, a metal shoe. innumerable lengths of ribbon and string in every color he could name snaked around the dirt floor or clung to the rough bricks and nails of his walls. Green and blue and magenta and fuchsia and cafe au latte', he loved them all for their simple beauty. When the sun was its brightest, at just the right time, it also lit up his favorite things in his hoard; the coins. Copper, brass, silver, gold, he had dozens of them, and many still glinted dully despite their tarnish. 

Coins were Jezabel's only indication of the passing of time around him. 1888, 1895, 1902, 1922. Painstakingly, Jezabel sorted his collection often, scattering them about in a shower of heavy clinking and tinkling, only to slowly arrange them back into order. Sometimes oldest first, sometimes newest first- 1998, dropped from the pocket of a small boy as he ran away from Jezabel's basement, screaming his head off in Spanish. This was, so far, his favorite. 1998- over 100 years, could that be right? The number hung in the air before him every time he looked at the coin, but it didn't seem solid, not in the least bit. It was too abstract, too dreamlike. Sure, such a thing would explain those flame-less, cordless lights and all the humming and buzzing he'd heard over the years and the STRANGEST things he'd seen the intruders in his home wear, but a century was simply too much to grasp. Even if he'd lived to be a healthy old man, Jezabel should have only seen 1950, maybe 1960, but the 1990s? No, that was too bizarre, and any time he dwelt on it, there was that cotton wool again, to dampen down the panic within him.

Except, that shroud seemed to be thinning these days. Lethargy and exhaustion kept a far looser grip on him, it see,ed, and the fact that every day he woke up and it was still sunny and clear outside his windows was at least some indication of this. No falling leaves, no snow. Seasons did not pass as he 'slept' or whatever it was when his conscious grip on this world lessened. The air was to blame. All day now it buzzed and hummed and throbbed with a new, lively pulse and Jezabel was drawn to this like moths to candlelight. Sunset after sunset as those lanterns began to shine he was roused from his slumber, wafting up through the house to where this stranger worked. So busy he was, industrious, going well into the reaches of night, and Jezabel could approve this. He, too, could recall seeing the sunrise after no sleep, working his fifth cup of coffee- a treat that this man, this Mr. Cooper seemed to also like. Often there was a mug of it on a shelf or a mantle, just out of reach of the flying dust, and more than once Jezabel had helped himself to this luxury. Like right now. Mr. Cooper was going to town on the dining room floor, taking some sort of chemical to all the sticky residue spots left on the hardwood after that HIDEOUS green and orange and yellow carpet was ripped up; many of Jezabel's sense were dulled nowadays but his eyesight was clearer than every without a defective body to get in the way, and the most recent decor was just atrocious. As he worked, listening to more of that queer music, Jezabel savored the heat from Cooper's chipped mug, a glossy thing, black, with bright yellow cartoonish stars printed all over it. He took his coffee with milk and a little sugar, and it was such a pretty shade of brown, steaming, and Jezabel could almost feel the heat it gave off, the energy. It was impossible for him to actually /touch/ it, of course, but he didn't care; it was the feeling he wanted, and he soaked up the warmth for quite some time, until he was quite sure there was none left. Oh...no, there was no steam drifting from the fluid any more. Coopers loss, he supposed. He should keep better eye on his mug. 

William Cooper...he had learned the name and began to commit it to memory along side his own. William Cooper spoke with a funny accent he couldn't quite place, and wore the same strange underwear-type shirts and stiff canvas trousers that he saw the children wearing when they snuck in to paint five-pointed stars on his walls and light candles. He wore glasses, thin ones with little gold metal frames that made his hazel eyes look far larger than they were. Jezabel knew his eye color well; after all, he could get a hairs breadth away from Cooper's face without the man even knowing, which was yet another thing that sent a thrum of energy through his being. Now, as always, Jezabel rather enjoyed having power over another.

)o(

Cooper crawled into bed that night aching, but clean, well fed and accomplished. So far, everything was going on or even ahead of schedule, and he thanked God for that.Next week he had a man coming out to dig up the electrical lines and replace them, and he couldn't do anything major to the walls until this happened, but there was plenty to keep him busy till then. Hell, the bathrooms alone would require a whole day of online shopping, and then there was reproduction paper to buy, drapes to have sewn; of course in most cases, a true restoration just wasn't possible, especially in houses that were meant to actually be functional and not just showpieces. He knew at least of his his renovations had become a B and B, which he had stayed in on occasion to much pleasure. No, just having appropriate decor was enough for most people, and his own sensibilities. AS in love with the era as he was, even he didn't fancy doing his business with a D trap toilet or bathing with a shower fit to scald off his skin.

With a mind pleasantly buzzing with plans and patterns, Cooper began to drift off; he wasn't sure if he was completely asleep or not when a crashing noise jolted him from his sleep.

"FUCK!" he cried out as he sat bolt upright, and in an instant his skin began to itch and prickly with sweat, the saltwater cold upon his heated skin. Instantly he regretted his outburst and his hand flew to his mouth, as though trying to stifle a sound long let out; there was no taking back a scream. Shit, SHIT, he knew he'd heard something but he hadn't a clue from where it had come. Still and silent he sat, his ears primed to listen to every noise the house might offer, but they were few. With no electricity yet installed, there was no refrigerator, no air conditioner or heater, no tv in a distant room. Nights like these he often grew to appreciate the peace and quiet in which a Victorian might have slept but right now, such romantic notions were quite far from his stressed out mind. Instead his thoughts were more along the lines of, fuck fuck FUCK there's someone in my house!

Several minutes ticked by as William sat in his sleeping bag, a cramp begging to form in his calf but even this couldn't entice him to move from his statuesque stillness. The room around him was almost completely black, a half moon just illuminating the windows in the deepest shades of blue. Plenty of shadows for someone to hide in, wrapped in their inky blackness. But if anyone was about, he couldn't feel their eyes on him-

THUD- creeeaaaak

Honestly William was surprised he didn't piss himself a little as a muffled sound traveled up from the basement, anothe rheavy crash followed by a slow, squeaking metallic barrage, one that just dug into his ear and set his teeth on edge, both from annoyance and from terror. God damn it he wished he could own a fucking gun; good old Sparkle Hammer would have to do him for now. Quivering legs barely held his weight as he rose, and tried to remember which floorboards squeaked and which groaned underfoot. Gingerly he trod across them with his hammer, down the hall from his airy dining room camp and into the kitchen. Bubbly linoleum cracked with each step,and he tried to spread his weight evenly, desperate to not alert the intruder to his presence. Cops, he thought as he neared the steps to the basement, in the back of the kitchen. Fuck this he should call the cops! But a side of his brain told him once more, that this was just kids playing pranks, that was it, and no use getting a couple tween brats in trouble just for having a bit of fun. Trespassing. On private property...god damn it.

With a shuddering breath to stabilize him, William began the decent down the stairs, relying on moonlight and memory and precious little else to guide his path downward; he dared not bring a flashlight, not when he was trying to Batman his way in stealth mode.

As he neared the bottom of the stairs, another sound reached him, much softer this time; rain, he thought, at the soft tinkleing noise, and immediately his heart eased. Thunder! That must he what he heard that woke him, just a summer storm, and now it was raining! ...But how was there moonlight if it was raining? A Sunshower, but at night? Actually, no, now that he listened...he took a tentative step into the basement, the cobblestone cold even through his Star Trek socks, but at least stone didn't squeak. No, it was too uneven to be rain. Sporadic. He tipped his head, trying to discern the source of the noise, and turned to his right. This side of the basement was where he planned to hook up the washer and perhaps a dryer; it seemed appropriate, since an old wringer was still attached down here, a 1950's remnant, and back when this was the scullery and kitchen, the washing would have been done here. Now, though, the wringer and a few bits of trash were all that was left, aside from a pentacle spray painted on the floor that would need a power washing. Squinting in the dim light, he looked to the tiny casement windows for signs of something tapping against the glass, but found none. Another stride deeper into the basement, and the sound grew louder. Metal, perhaps? Almost sounding like coins being plunked into a jar-

The sound of racing footsteps on the stairs behind him froze Williams blood in his veins and welled tears in his yes from sheer terror alone. THIS noise was beyond miscalculation. They were solid, heavy, and even as they pounded behind him, becoming softer as they reached the top. Once again, the fact that he kept control of his bodily functions astounded him, and he swore to drag that brat to the police station by his fucking ear! Emboldened by his assurance that it was a kid, just a kid, HAD to be, he raced after him, his heart pounding as adrenaline took hold of his body. A flicker of movement caught the corner of his eye, followed by more heavy, thundering steps, and he knew instantly the kid was done for; he was racing upstairs! Either he was about to corner himself, or he was narrowing down the possibility of places Cooper would have to look to fortify his home against teeny tiny daredevils!

He followed to the stairs, taking them two at a time, sure that he could outrun an 11 or 12 year old child, but as he crested the top of the stairs he saw no one, and for a moment he thought the brat must already be making his escape, but a shuffling above him in the attic relieved him of any need to search the second story room by room. PERFECT.

"Come on down, kid," he called as he climbed the stairs. "I know you're up there, I can hear you, and only ONE of those windows still opens!"

There was no response, and he sighed. He was 39, ok? He was too damned old for this, and he didn't care much for small kids.

"I said come down. You leave now and I promise I wont tell, you won't get in trouble." This tactic brought him no further luck, and he couldn't see anyone as he reached the doorway into the attic. Directly at his left was one of his battery powered lanterns, and he flicked it on, casting the room into stark relief. Still, it illuminated no crouching child. There was no way the kid managed to get out of the window and onto the roof this quick; there was still several trunks piled in front of it, so he HAD to be hiding. 

"Fine, wanna play hide and go seek? Let's play."

William Cooper spent the next half hour tearing through the attic as roughly as he dared among the antiques. Boxes were shuffled around, trunks opened- he'd hear the horror story of the bride who crawled into a trunk to play, only for it to become her casket, and he wished no such fate on local school children. Beneath desk and in drawers he searched, but as one dusty corner after another failed to turn up a child, the chill that found him in the basement began to creep in again. He...he KNEW there was someone here, damn it, he'd heard them, he'd SEEN them, a slip of shirt or backpack or hair or something pale, and he'd HEARD them, solid as anything, tearing up two flights of stairs! SO where the fuck were-

Behind him there was a faint shuffling and a scratch, and sure that the mongrel was finally done fucking around or getting scared and was coming out of hiding, Cooper grinned, and turned around to begin a MAJOR tongue lashing.

"Didn't your parents ever teach you-"

William's words were drown out very quickly by a loud hiss and the tinny, garbled sounds of a 70 year old record as the Victor phonograph began to play, the crank turning with no hand in sight to set it in motion.


	6. Found Footage Is the Work of the Devil

With the lock secured behind him, Cooper spent the next 3 hours holed up in his bathroom with his phone, charger, laptop, laptop charger and his leftover pizza, alternately comfort eating and Googleing as fast as his fingers could take him. One by one he typed phrases into the search bar; London security alarms; London home security; best guard dogs; German Shepherd guard dogs; pit bull guard dogs; pit bull guard dogs- images; pit bull puppies.....Can an immigrant get a gun license in London. The entire time he kept his ears pricked over the sound of his keyboard and the small vibrations of his phones typing for any indication that he was continuing to NOT be alone. Around him, though, the house had fallen silent, without any scuffling, shuffling or footsteps to be heard. This was of little comfort to the professor, though, who just crammed another bite of Parmesan-coated crust into his mouth and typed, "Castle laws in London."

'This is ridiculous,' he told himself as he eyed the half-empty pizza box set upon the closed toilet lid. 'and probably unhygienic.' Honestly, it wasn't like he'd never had someone in his house before! Such a thing was part and parcel with the flipping of local...for lack of a better word, haunts. Everyone and their dog had stories about that creepy house in their neighborhoods, be it a witch's hovel, a vampires tomb or a good old fashioned portal to the undead- those stories did not, in fact, simply go away once a flesh and blood human moved in, on the contrary! In his experience, they had only been known to increase. Movies and books played into this trope far too often for the average 11 year old to ignore; some foreigner loner moves into the haunted lot at the end of the block, with the rotted shutters and the 33 stone steps leading up to the grand Victorian estate, only to be active mostly by moonlight. Add to this the fact that often they knew all the secret ways in and out well before he did, and so far he'd had only one house that did not have unexpected prepubescent guests. It may not have lead to his proudest moments; he'd shrilled a few times upon waking to find a kid dressed like Jason hovering over his sleeping form, or the little girl from The Ring, but all of those had ended with laughter from the children, who knew after being chased out that it was over, their fun was through. This time, though, there was yet to be closure, and that didn't sit well with William. He...damn it, he was wide awake, he KNEW there was someone in his God damned attic, but there was only ONE window accessible from the outside, wasn't there? A trellis ran up the side of the house, onto an angled bit of roof, beneath the east attic window. There was no way for someone to have gotten to it in the time it took Cooper to burst into the attic behind them.

And then, of course, there was that DAMN record player. William shuddered at the fresh memory, the first grainy notes of the music still crammed into his ears; he had a terrifically strong desire to smash that fucking record now, and no desire to hear that particular melody again. Ever since it began to play, and he had nearly sprained his ankle tripping over himself to bolt down the stairs, he had been desperate to figure out what had happened. Locked in his bathroom, he had listened to the last notes eek from the old machine, slower and slower as the turntable stopped, leaving silence and terror in its wake. An old device, he told himself once more. Grit in the cogs, slimy mold beneath the table making things slip. Rats! Of course his home had rats, they always did, and London rats were truly things of legend. Surely a particularly fat specimen could have walked on the crank...and turned it enough to maybe screech out a few distorted notes. Fuck. He had played with it himself, and knew what force it took to turn that crank! It was not a feet attainable by even the rolliest-polliest of British vermin!

Heat radiated from the bottom of his laptop, threatening to burn his legs through his sweats in only the way a laptop could do, but Cooper welcomed it. His legs were the only part of him that was warm. Despite wrapping himself in his bathrobe as soon as he'd settled into his makeshift fort, he shivered still, and had been since the attic. He couldn't seem to get warm, and it wasn't simply from the room, since the radiator was doing its best to keep everything cozy. No, this chill permeated from his bones, it seemed, seeping from his heart to his veins, his tissue and tendons holding the threat of frostbite with each pump. Upstairs, and down in the basement, that...that wasn't what he normally encountered when he moved into these new houses, and atop of that Edwardian symphony, he also couldn't shake the sound of that metallic rattle out of his head. Over and over he played that noise, trying to piece together its origin. Pipes, marbles, coins, chains- that last one sent his spine shivering again, as it conjured up images of Ebeneezer scrooge and his rag and metal clad spectral visitors. Cooper didn't BELIEVE in ghosts, damn it, but that didn't mean he didn't get a little spooked at a good horror movie-

...Ah. That must be it, he thought to himself, a little tension releasing from his shoulders. He'd been doing this for 12 years now; horror movies were a constantly evolving beast, each trying to up the score, bring more dazzling effects, more realistic blood and gore, each wanting to leave its audience with an emptier bladder than the last. His last house had been bad enough, started just after the Paranormal Activity movies had become such a massive success; since then there had been Grave Encounters, Unfriended, that new Blair Witch thing; a younger, savvier generation was coming up, then, who knew the low-budget but high-pay off secrets of practical effects, the sort used in those "real" horror movies. God damn it he was starting to miss the days of rubber Freddy Kruger masks now!

A tint of shame colored Williams cheeks, but at least it was another warm spot on his still-chilled body, but he let a small, self deprecating grin crawl to his face as he reached for his last piece of pizza, biting into the cheesy tip with relish. Kids were clever, far moreso than adults often gave credit for. It was easier than ever to pull off tricks that just ten years ago they would have no knowledge of. Fucking YouTube was such a double edged sword that way, he supposed. It provided him the ability to sand and refinish his own furniture, but also let his little haunters find new ways to torture his poor aging soul. Through his glasses, he glanced down at the 21 open tabs on his browser, and began to close out of his newest search; London paranormal investigations.

How fucking foolish.

)o(

William Cooper was vexing and Jezabel wasn't sure how well he cared for him right now. That bastard! He had been a heavy sleeper here-to-for, snoozing away as Jezabel made all sorts of clatter and racket around HIS home. HIS. Oh yes, he heard Mr. Cooper on the telephone plenty, talking to different servicemen about what he needed done to HIS home, HIS yard- bull! This may not be a place Jezabel ever LIVED, for very long at least, but it belonged to HIM. Cassian had left it to HIM, damn it, not some idiot who still wore short trousers to bed! Admittedly, he supposed knocking down that shelf beneath the stairs HAD been a bit more of a...carrying noise than he'd made previously, but it wasn't his fault! He hadn't any real ears, sound was little more than vibration to him, something that set him on edge when it grew too shrill, so he had little concept of "loud" these days! Besides, with as heavily as Cooper clod around, as much of that vibration energy as he could feel from the streets and through open windows, couldn't he have slept through that as well?!

Mr. Cooper already had the run of his house and property, including all the places he was unable to go beyond the veranda; it wouldn't do at ALL for him to go snooping around int he basement where he didn't belong and find his crawlspace, his sanctuary. Only once had someone stuck their nose in there, a girl of about 5 or 6, he thought, though with the bright, geometrical patterns on her silky coat it was hard to be sure it was a girl, who had wandered in on hand and knee while her compatriots went hunting for bones or something. She certainly wasn't in there for long before she ran out scream about seeing a woman with white hair and silver eyes. This had filled him with glee, and he glowed just a little more brightly in his space. Once upon a time men's eyes would fill with that same fear when they realized he held their lives in his hands, as he pressed hands to their necks to feel the thrum of their desperate pulse. He had never killed a child, and had no particular desire to do so, but that power was as intoxicating now as ever. Besides, the brat never came back and that's what mattered. Wouldn't do at all to have her grubby hands all over his collections. Hers, or Coopers.

A smile painted Jezabel's thin lips at the memory of William's face; he hand't seen someone look so horrified in who knows how long! As soon as that music began to play, Jezabel KNEW he had won, not only enticing Cooper away from the basement but now, surely, away from the house itself!

Jezabel was ready to throw a FIT once he realized that William Cooper was not, in fact, ready to move out, but he didn't let that rage overtake him. Fits were EXHAUSTING, they drained any reserved energy he had within minutes, and even with how wakeful he had been as of late, he knew it could be days if not weeks before he roused again, and with WILLIAM around he couldn't bare it! Besides, aggravating as he was, Mr Cooper was also intriguing, he could say that about him, and Jezabel had spent such a long time being so very bored. As long as he stayed the hell away from his crawlspace, he would contain his rage, and try to remember whether or not he had ever been good at being patient. 

)o(

Taboo came home with Cooper from the pound four days later. She was a beautiful 8 month old mutt, looking mostly husky, he thought, but he wasn't sure and neither was the pound. She had been abandoned due to a difficulty in housebreaking her, but Cooper had grown up with dogs, and these floors all needed redoing anyway; if she was gonna piddle on anyone's floor, it might as well be his, and she was a beautiful, friendly thing aside from all that. He was sure she'd love the huge yard, and all the great empty rooms to run amok in.

Perhaps it was a bit on the impulsive side, and DEFINITELY on the paranoid side, but William was rather fond of sleep and not having people in his house uninvited. Besides, he'd contemplated getting a dog or cat for some time. At 39, he'd only been in two serious relationships, one man, a math professor at his university in London one woman back in Nebraska, and he had his share of fun, casual weekends with attractive people of various levels of compatibility, but he'd yet to find anyone he wanted to bring home and actually share a toothbrush cup with. He'd had a string of Guinea pigs for a while but they weren't really known for their love of long walks, and his beta, Gary, wasn't much a hand- or fin- at fetch. A dog just seemed...cozy, and reminded him a bit of home. It's not like there was anything particularly American about his new roommate, but there was just something about her smiley face and her sun-warmed fur through the car window that reckoned back to cornfields and fireflies.

As soon as she was let in, she tore about the first floor in abject delight, her filed claws clacking on the worn, scuffed hardwood. He made a note to pay careful attention to her noises, so they didn't add to his panic-filled insomnia. Sure that she was safe inside, he began to haul in dog food, a large pillow, tennis balls and dishes in from his old Nissan, setting her up a nice area right next to his own in the dining room.

"Whaddya think girl, you like the place?" He asked her in passing, though she was little more than a streak of black and dark silver as she darted past him towards the stairs; a shuffling and an OOF told him she wasn't use to such an obstacle, and he laughed quietly to himself, letting her explore her new home as he trailed room to room, looking for any dropped nails or leftover Mar's bars wrappers he wouldn't want her to get into. 

Somewhere in the back of his mind, in such a vague wisp that he could only snort at the notion, he thought to himself, well, if there's any spooks around, dogs know it, right? Animals HATED ghosts!

)o(

Jezabel was beyond himself with delight. He'd been watching the driveway from a second story window, in the front bedroom, the one still painted bright orange from the last tenant, as Cooper drove back into the yard, because what else did he have to do with his time, when he'd opened up a passenger door and out bounded the largest, fluffiest, happiest dog he's sure he had EVER seen. True, it had been....quite some time...since he'd last seen a dog but he was SURE it was true! The lovely specimen of a beast had zipped into the house with zest, and he could hear it tearing up the entire downstairs.

"You like it here, Tabby?" He heard William laugh, and he assumed that meant the dogs name was Tabitha. What a beautiful girl she was, he thought, when she scampered clumsily up the stairs and straight into the room he was in, obviously eager to meet each occupant of her new house. She wagged her tail merrily as Jezabel brushed his hands over her bushy head, pretending for a moment he could actually feel her fur gliding through his fingers.

"You'll love it here, Tabby."

)o(

Rains flooded the outskirts of London for the next three days which was...hardly surprising by any stretch of the imagination but was still a burden on William. He couldn't do much with all the windows closed, unless he wanted to asphyxiate both himself and his new puppy with the fumes of paint stripper, as he couldn't open the windows. On the other hand, he was learning where all the best leaks were in the roof, and was setting up tarps and buckets accordingly. With a pot roast and potatoes in a slow cooker for supper, far away from Taboo's greedy jaws, he set up a steamer to begin peeling down the wallpaper in the foyer, the only place he knew did NOT have a layer of arsenic underneath the 70's orange and brown. 

Day two was leftover pot roast, more steam cleaning, and cleaning grout in the bathroom.

Day three he said fuck it and spent the day at a pet shop with Taboo before having a coffee, a restaurant meal and seeing a movie.

Finally, with the skies still overcast with without the heavy threat of rain, Cooper threw the windows open, letting in the fresh smell of water and earth and GREEN, and decided to begin work on the outside of his home, and then slowly work outwards towards the gardens. Taboo was put on a long chain spike in the backyard, where she had a sizable radius to sniff and explore and work on her new bully stick while her roommate, with a rented ladder, began the painstaking and meticulous task of checking the exoskeleton of his project. This was tedious at best, involving scores of climbs up and down, moving the ladder, then up and down again. Every window needed to be inspected from the outside, being far more prone to rot from without than within. The shingles needed inspecting to see if any were salvageable, and the gutters, he was VERY sure, were going to be an all out nightmare. They always were, and he never looked forward to seeing what sort of dead animal corpses he would drag out among the leaves and compost and long-forgotten Christmas decor. 

This was, of course, no exception, and he was immediately delaying his lunch upon the discovery of what he thought might have been a squirrel in another lifetime.

"Eugh," he gagged to himself, stuffing the poor creature into the the industrial black back he had tied to the rung of his ladder. It was a good thing Cooper wasn't afraid of heights; with 2-3 story houses, he could be upwards of 25 feet in the air, which was never a very pleasant experience. He just kept his eyes on his hands, moving rhythmically from gutter to shingles to bag and bag. If he kept his concentration on the dead leaves and frayed stitching on his gloves, he wouldn't be looking at the concrete 12+ feet below him, nor would he ponder about skull-to-stone physics.

By lunch he was already sick of this shit, working up a sweat, and he's only gotten through one side of the house. Up and down and up and down; Taboo was thrilled with all the motion, but Cooper just wanted lunch, which he prepared for the both of them (though, he had to admit, his was a tad more luxurious than a half cup of kibble). As soon as his last bite of sandwich was consumed, it was back up the ladder; at least now he'd turned the corner onto the north side of the house, into the relative shade. The sun was trying its damnedest to shine through the dense clouds. 

Another hour passes, and finally he reached a tall eave over a bank of windows on the second floor and, with caution, he tested the durability of the roof. Shrouded by dense trees, it seemed to be solid and, with a prayer, he stepped up onto it, looking forward to not having to move his FUCKING ladder for a while. Mindful of his balance still, he scooped the gutters, flipped the shingles, and tested the drain pipe running down the corner for rust, and, despairingly, found plenty.

"Fuck," he swore under his breath, though it was hardly surprising. He wiped the back of his glove against his perspiring brow, cursing the humid British summers, and leaned back against the solid attic wall behind him. Only, it wasn't nearly as solid as he had hoped. His stomach rose up into his throat as his weight sunk back heavily into the ornate Queen Anne style woodwork behind him, the rotten panel splintering with ease.

Great, this was. Just what he needed. He'd hoped to keep as much of the original detailing in ta...in tact. Huh. Honestly now that he got a closer look at it, this area honestly looked out of place. The house wasn't Queen Anne style at all, the rest of the building void of the gingerbread scalloping present here in this large scrolling decor, once white, now grimy, set against the faded green home. It was obviously a later add on...and a rather hasty, tacky one, now that he looked at it with closer scrutny. Likely someone mid century or so who wanted the house to look more "victoriany" without any regard to architecture or style or era or any of the other things he shouldn't expect other people to know but still did. Well then! Perhaps this was his lucky day! Cautiously, he pressed his weight into the rotted wood, and it continued to splinter up beneath his touch, and with gloved hands he eased a damp chunk away. He didn't want to go crashing to the grass below, so he went slow, with gentle pressure, curious to know if the wall beneath was rotten with damp, or if perhaps being in the shade had preserved more of its color. Chunk by chunk the fake decor came away from the wall, revealing a disgusting mess of cobwebs, dead bugs and leaves beneath it. God he couldn't wait for a fucking shower!

Piece by piece the wood was tossed off the roof, far away from Taboo's wandering jaws, until finally William caught just a glimpse of something shine dully in the shaded afternoon light. Squinting behind his sweat-slipping glasses, he tried to peer into the dark, narrow space, but there simply wasn't enough room yet. So, he continued his work with (still careful) vigor, a hand sized hole opening into one the size of a paperback, then a plate. Finally, a sizable chunk tore away unexpectedly, and he felt that throat-bile experience once again, tasting disturbingly of turkey, pepper jack and mustard. This piece whooshed through the air as he tossed it away, and William gaped at what he found behind the cheap, crude facsimile of decor.

A motherfucking window, cracked and caked with ages of dirt, had been boarded up behind the painted boards, tattered and motheaten scraps of drapery just barely visible behind the brown glass. Mentally, William walked himself through his house, through the attic; windows on the east, west and south, set into recessed alcoves, but nothing but a flat, blank wall on the...the north side.

As the disbelief wore off, William grinned with elation, feeling like a 19th century Indiana Jones at his discovery; nothing like this had been shown in the plans! The blueprints showed an asymmetrical attic, 3 windows, one large room these days, and he knew this had to have been boarded up for some reason, likely just forgotten about during storage and renovation! Cupping his hands around his eyes, Cooper leaned in, not giving a damn about the sticky spiders silk or crunching leaves in his hair, and peered intently into the grimy, filthy glass.

And then nearly fell off his roof to his death, because the face he saw reflecting back at him was not his own.


	7. Blood and Batteries

Ghosts weren't real. Spirits and specters were nothing but the results of an overactive imagination, influenced by generations of stories told in the dark to explain what could not otherwise be understood. Swamp gas and moths in the moonlight, fires gleaming off the eyes of wolves. These were ghosts to their ancestors, not actually a disembodied soul! William Cooper was a historian, God damn it, an anthropologist! It was his JOB to understand the myths of any given generation, the moral qualms that their religion held over their head, the chemicals in their food known to cause mass hallucinations. Arsenic, cyanide, laudanum, preservatives in pickles, wild mushrooms favored by pixelated plumbers, every rational explanation one could want was just a Google away, so why was he shaking so badly in the mid day sun, too anxious to even step up onto his own front porch?

Taboo, to his left, was happily yipping at the bugs that flew up from the grass during each of her pounces, as though she had a bit of a herding dog in her, completely oblivious to her humans anxiety. Around him the yard was scattered with the weathered and rotted wood, the lid to the treasure chest of his discovery. Vaguely he thought he should clean up the splinters before some poor creature rammed it between the pads of their toes, but even that seemed too monumental a task right now. Back and forth he paced, glancing wildly back up to the window. From so far below, it was barely visible in the shadows of the roof and the remaining wood covering, and with the sun at its highest this entire side of the house was back lit, but there was no mistaking it. The grungy window still shone like an old, trod-upon coin, a pale sliver showing the curtains behind it. That was what he saw, of course, wasn't it? What he thought was a cascade of wild, white hair was instead just the curtains! Of course his own face would be distorted as well. Cracked glass bend at the seams, concaving in on itself and turning any reflection into a fun house amusement. That was all, truly. The light and curtains and shattered glass just happened to make him look like a ghastly pale woman with hair billowing about her-

"No wind in there," he whispered to himself, cussing as he began to debunk his own theory. He was SURE he saw the hair moving, coiling tendrils of it like weeds in a river. Then again, how could he be sure of anything?! He'd only peered in for 2 seconds, maybe three!

Growling to himself, he reached again for the phone tucked into his jeans pocket. Naturally, after a bad reflection, the most logical explanation was that someone was living in his god damned attic. He'd heard stories like that before, on Reddit and shared in blips on Facebook. People finding that vagrants had been stowing away in their attic or their kitchen cupboards, coming out at night to tun up their water bill and nosh on leftover spaghetti bolagnase. If that could happen in a busy, occupied urban apartment then surely it could happen in his long-abandoned pet project? But then, he just couldn't quite bring himself to click 'call' on the local police precinct. It was still so outlandish, when he was CERTAIN it was his reflection, that's all, and he ought to be concentrating on the cooler aspect here, which was a fucking HIDDEN ROOM in his VICTORIAN MANOR.

He exited out of his browser and pulled up his contacts instead, thumbing through the list before selecting a certain maths professor he may or may not have slept with on occasion.

"Ezra? Hey...you busy? ...yeah I got a reno job I need a hand with. Yeah, we can get curry later... ... Awesome, see you in thirty."

)o(

Ezra, a couple years younger than himself, had been an on again off again fling since he'd moved to London 13 years ago to take up his teaching position, and while it was mostly 'off' in terms of any romantic endeavors or drunken sexual escapades, hardly a week went by where the two didn't at least grab a drink, gossip on the other teachers or marathon whatever they could dig up on Netflix. They were both foreigners, Ezra's family coming from the far north of Russia, so they had that much in common, at least, and though he wasn't as deeply into history as, well, as history professor, he admired the grand old houses Cooper always inhabited. And, even more, he was a sucker for anything creepy, mysterious, or supposedly paranormal; he'd LOVE this.

"You're SHITTING ME," he breathed out, as he joined William at his side and gazed up at the cracked wood and nearly-exposed window. "And this wasn't on the blueprints?"

"None of them," William confirmed, shaking his head and splitting a Coke, passing the bottle back to Ezra after a long swallow. "And I have them back to 1920."

"Yeah well the house is, what, 1860s? 70s? That's a half century to fuck around with the architecture you know. Lets go!"

And with no other pressuring, Ezra had dug a hammer out of William's tool hoard and lead the way up the stairs into the house. Ezra was a no-nonsense sort, but easy going where William was a bit more uptight, more a fan of methodical planning and finishing one task before starting another. This, however, just wouldn't DO when it came to exploring the unknown.

It wasn't as though Cooper expected the attic to look any different as they stepped inside, but he still couldn't help but feel as though he expected something to change, like a door to suddenly materialize in that large, blank wall to the north, a Twilight Zone moment of 'how did i never notice this is in all the hours I've spent up here?' While he hung back, intend on surveying how this wall might differ from that around it, peel off more of the crisp, crumbling paper to date it and the wood behind it against the rest, Ezra came in, quite literally, swinging, and William nearly screamed as the hammer met wood for the first time.

"Toughen up ya yank," he laughed good-naturally, swinging again. The wood here was likely the same used to board up the outside but, away from the constant barrage of English weather, was still quite solid in most regards, but there was only so long it could hold up against a 6'3 Russian native. Several more blows landed, making a hollow after-effect behind the cracking and splintering. After 7 pounds, a seam split, floor to ceiling, and chunks began to crack away on either side, and William recalled Will Perry and his impossibly sharp knife, slicing through the particles of one world to open a portal into another, except this wasn't from the fancies of Philip Pullman; it was a solid, very physical renovation occurring in his home.

Must and dust and dirt filled the already none-too-springtime-fresh attic, the anemic light beyond the cracking wall streaming into the main room with a thick, sludgy curtain of dust motes, and finally Ezra pulled away a moment, peered into the gloom, and whistled.

"There's a lot of junk back here, Will," he observed with raised eyebrows, and began his swinging anew, obviously as eager as his ex boyfriend to get a peek. Once he deemed it safe, William scurried forward, slipped his work gloves back on, and began to use his own weight to pry off the loosened fragments. The smell inside was dank and mildewy, as he would expect, and his eyes watered as they stirred up one dirtdevil after another. Ezra's lungs didn't seem to take well to this either, and he coughed up about 3/4 of a lung before they finally had a hole large enough tor even Ezra's sturdy frame to slide through. Eyes watering, William reached for his trust Duracel lantern, flicked it on, and lead the way in, figuring it WAS his house afterall, and his third of a million that had gone into it thus far. Blinking through the haze of dirt and [protective tears, he came to find himself standing in a room about 8 by 15, essentially just the one arm of the Swiss style cross that contained the beveled ceiling and alcoved window. His footsteps were softened not only by the inch of dust underfoot, but also a very thoroughly rotted rug, which might once have been a riot of reds; a dining room thing then, chopped small for the nursery or maids chambers, it seemed. Against the eaves on one side sat the remnants of a bed, a narrow iron thing, with the straw stuffed hair mattress completely eaten away by the decades, leaving just a few scraps of material to cling to the metal and wood platform. A wooden chair on spindly legs served as a bedside table, a candlestick still sat upon it. Cooper squinted, willing his eyes to continue to adjust, and he raised the lantern higher as Ezra stepped in behind him.

"This is some survival horror shit you know?" he murmured, and Cooper, reluctantly, nodded. Neither played video games much, but often on their hang out nights at Ezra's flat, his little brother would, and it was far more entertaining than it had any right to be, to watch him scream his way through a virtual mental hospital or ghost town. He had to admit, this place had that deralect look to it, from the rusted wires barely holding up the portraits of the long dead, to the shelves filled with dead rodents, to-

"....Hey, Will? ...What's that?" Ezra asked, his usually solid voice shaking a bit, and Williams gaze followed him, down onto the floor.

Oh. Down to the suspicious, dark brown stains seeped immovably into the carpet.

)o(

"Someone died in your house, Coop."

"It's 170 years old I'm sure a LOT of people have died in my house."

"Someone died BLOOD, William!"

"Is that you being scared or just trying to pic up British slang?"

"Aren't you scared?!"

....Well honestly he was but he didn't want to admit that to anyone, even himself, because it was ridiculous. 

"N-no," he stammered out, trying ti be convincing, but Ezra's dark eyes scrutinized him. "I mean! Ezra, if that's blood- and there is NO evidence that it is, you know, it could just as likely be kerosene or oil tipped by a clumsy child at dinner!- but IF it's blood, it's not like it's a crime scene-"

"Not a fresh one anyway," Ezra felt the need to point out with a quite entertained smirk, and Cooper was remembering why their bedroom relationship had turned back to platonic friendship; Ezra could be infuriating.

"Well see, exactly," William crowed, taking Ezras words as a triumph. "See, it would be a century old at LEAST if someone was hurt up there, and as long as I have been at this, I'm sure it wouldn't be the only time someone died in my homes from something besides consumption of arsenic or old age!"

"Yeah but Will, come on, this is CREEPY," Ezra continued ot protest, his eyes alight with the mystery of the situation. "That room wasn't just a door boarded up or accidentally forgotten; the attic was all one room before, you know that, and someone intentionally put that partition up and blocked the window from the outside, how does that NOT set your hair on edge?!"

It did, though, that was the problem. He'd developed a seemingly chronic case of goosebumps since his time on the roof, one that even the summer sun could not sooth away. He had, of course, neglected to tell Ezra about how sure he had been for a moment of seeing a pale, gaunt face staring back at him on the blocked end of the glass. 

"It's historically relevant," was all he did to concede Ezra's point, but his ex lover smirked all the same, the cat with the cream.

"Do you wanna stay at my place tonight or anything? Or have me stay here?"

William scoffed, shaking his head as the beeper on the coffee pot dinged, letting them know the beverage had brewed. "What, afraid I've angered the dead or something?"

There was no teasing in his posture as he gave an earnest 'well maybe!' shrug and wave of his hands.

"Oh for God's sake Ezra, you're too old to believe in ghosts."

"Whole religions are built around ghosts, you know."

"No, they're built around zombies, there's a difference." Two mugs were filled with coffee, creamer, and sugar, and he passed the second one to Ezra across the card table he used for his meals now, having evolved passed the cross-legged n the floor phase. "I'm fine. Sure, it's a little...creepy, but all this means is I get an afternoon at the library being that weird American guy who digs through boxes of newspapers and scanned film for 5 hours before the librarian kicks me out."

"Just another day in the life of William Cooper, hm?"

)o(

Sunset did not bring a quiet to his house, no, peace did not fall until well past 2 am, but that was fine with Jezabel. Clocks meant little to him now, unless it was those glowy ones that lit up the numbers on sheets of glass, blue or green. He liked those, he liked the thrum they gave and the warmth he could soak up from them. William had one on what Jezabel was trying to convince himself to believe was his telephone- a marvel, really, nothing but a bit of glass and black backing no thicker than his little finger! Jezabel liked that clock quite a bit, because now the numbers were illuminated over a photograph of Jezabels new puppy, smiling happily up at William as he snapped the photograph instantly. Still, though, the actual numbers on said clocks didn't dictate his life. No deadlines, no need for sleep or, at least, not the rhythmic cycles of sleep. It was no stress to him then than William stayed up so late. He was sure he was snoring softly two floors below, curled in his sleeping bag.

Jezabel, on the other hand, had taken to the attic, where he 'sat' as much as he could upon a steamer trunk that he knew was filled with lamp shades and scarves. William would dig through it soon enough, he was sure, once he got over his fear of the attic. A grin curled on Jezabel's ashy lips. The look upon Williams face when he saw him through the glass was delightful, and served him right honestly, snooping about in others bedrooms! These 21st century people were just so NOSY! Bedrooms were NOT public rooms, not meant for entertaining! What, did he want to pop in to borrow a hat pin?! This was Jezabel's room, just as much as his crawlspace, and now that Mr. Cooper has decided to take over the majority of their abode, he needed these private hideaways now more than ever.

His smile was quick to fade, and he compressed his chest in a still, breathless sigh as he stared at the irregular hole in the wall, open to the iron bed. Unbidden snippets of memory danced across his mind, but none were solid enough to stick, He was horribly ill when he lie there, afterall, and reality mingled with fever dream. Nothing after his fall at Delilah was truly solid, not in the hours he lie under Cassians care, not his first days free of the confines of the flesh. Water, , a soft voice turning to tears, seering heat and the feeling of ice, and suddenly, the cessation of all pain. Cassians hazel eyes had watched him, he knew, and he had some sense that Zenopia had been there as well, at least in the crumbleing halls of his father's palace, but nothing else was real to him, and what little there was faded more and more all the time.

Jezabel had no body to touch, nor to feel with, but all the same he raised a wisp of a hand to his throat, memory telling him where fingers would meet skin and bone had he any left. Though he didn't (usually) show up in a mirror, he could see himself in still water, like what often flooded into his crawlspace, and he knew his front was a cascade of gray 'blood,' his clothing the undone nightgown he had died in. Obviously he had bled throughout his convalescence, both inside and out, which, if infection didn't claim him, would have been what took him to the grave. Ashy grey and silver it was upon his front, a contrast to the earthy, warm tone seeped into the floor below him. 

Blood. Just the thought of it burst a warm glow throughout his form, and he ached to touch it. Not the dried, crusted remnants long grown dusty on the carpet, no, but the real thing. It had been EONS since he'd last felt it hot and sticky across his skin. SO much had faded, so much eluded him, but the thrill of blood running through his spindly fingers was fresh and solid.

Below him, William slept. William, he had heard say many times, did not believe in ghosts. The smile painted his face again, his hair swirling around him in see-through tendrils. Well, if he wanted to keep poking into Jezabel's business, perhaps it was time to change that erroneous opinion of this.


	8. No That's Mine Thank You

3 rounds of Starbucks and 6 hours at two separate libraries had yielded very little in terms of Williams treasure hunt. Box after box he'd scoured through, both at his universities personal collection and the more mainline public library for this borough of London, squinting at the smudged ink from old printing presses, reading innumerable birth certificates, death certificates, baby announcements in the paper. Any other day and he'd be beside him with joy at such an afternoons folly, but today, he was on a mission, one that was proving frustrating. It would probably help if he had any idea what he was looking for. Over and over he murmured his address to himself, his street name, knowing it had not changed in nearly 2 centuries, hoping his whispered mantra would cause any matching name to leap out at him from the pages. There was plenty, to be sure, once he hit the right era. The Holloway family were hardly social elite or titled, but they were a wealthy enough group of people, mostly from Gregory Holloway's family wealth, and for a while theirs had been one of only 4 houses on that swatch of land, with several acres to each home; itself a luxury in an era of renting. He HAD been pleased to find a grainy, high contrast print of a now-familiar photograph, though, a match for the picture he had framed and hung on the stairway wall. Family of 5, mother, father, 3 sons, one a sleeping babe. Beneath this newspaper reproduction read the caption. "Mr. and Mrs. G. Holloway w. children. Mr Holloway questioned for nonpayment of taxes." Ah, yes; Mr. Holloway did not inherit his fathers industrial knowledge at all. William had already cross-checked the family tree, finding birth records for the father, but none for the mother, being a Romani woman, at least via gossip. Their oldest child, a son baptized as Cassian, was born in 1861, with Daniel following in 66 and Bartholomew in 68. Death records for all but the oldest, who probably escaped early to avoid the shame of inheriting only debt. Though the papers seemed intent on covering every lewd detail of the family's fall from society, they had, of course no interest in detailing their home, save to speak of an auction in 79 as they left London in shame. The illustration here showed Mrs. Holloway still in a dated broad collar and drop-shoulder sleeves, obviously not having had a new gown in some time. Tragic, truly, but not what William needed.

More drawers were sifted through, 1870's, 1880's. It passed through wealthy owners, many of whom had their names in the paper for this or that charity, party or public blunder, but there was no mention of a murder. A son, a lawyer, died of suicide in 1891, though, and then the ownership records stop empty until 1899. Renting, leasing, more homes built nearby. A body found in the yard next door in 1902, unidentified and well decomposed; a murder finally cropped up in 1907, but it was all the way across the block, and occurred downstairs during a dinner. William sighed, sipping back another sip of his now-cold coffee with milk, and slipped off his glasses. The Victorians were excellent record keepers, being both obsessed with order and unable to keep their noses out of anyone else's business, but at the same time they had to be discreet about their snooping. A mans home as his castle was the attitude of the time, and everything from their bank numbers to their oil light was to be kept behind their own shutters, and it wouldn't DO for the neighbors to pry too deeply, so anything printed needed to be reported ' by chance' or 'for the greater good'. Private deaths, no matter how bloody, simply did not have their details leaked to the press. Besides, if something was truly amiss, like an invalid or mentally unwell family member kept in the attic, any well to do family would bend over backwards to keep it hush-hush. 

William photocopied a few personal-interest pieces, a couple illustrations, chatter with another teacher by the new releases section for a while, and then slipped from the cool, musty shadows of the library and into the blaring summer sun. He cursed as he sat himself into his car, the buckle burning his forearm, and cranked up the AC as he backed out and headed to the home shop once more. He had potential bloodstains to clean.

)o( 

God Jezabel longed to go outside! The house was bordered closely on both sides by newer homes, with only a half-acre of land on each side that belonged to him, but behind the house the land extended back quite some way, down a hill and into some thick forestry, before curving back up into the back yards of another neighborhood. From the attic windows, Jezabel could see the houses, maybe a kilometer away, or one and a half, just peeking through the tops of trees. It was hardly any sort of forest proper, just the division of yards with a thicket of trees and shrubs and bushes, but they'd been there as long as he could recall, and they looked so inviting, especially the berry bushes near the front. And, he was not the only one longing for a good run through them; his Tabby was currently whining at the back door, hopping about to go play, looking up at Jezabel every few moments with a look that just broke his heart.

"I know, my darling, but its locked on top of closed, and that would be TWO knobs for me to turn! I probably have the strength, but Mr. Cooper will be home soon anyway, I'm sure! Just be patient, princess."

And lo, he appeared some 15 minutes later, plastic bags rustling, canvas shushing against it as he settled his new purchases on the card table in the dining room.

"Taboo!" he called, though she was already well on her way to greet her human, with Jezabel just behind her. "There's my girl, you ready to go out?" he asked her tiredly, and she gave a big girl inside 'boof' and bounded over to the back door, following Cooper out to be put on her chain for a bit, until he took her for her nightly walk down along the neighborhood. Wistfully Jezabel stood at the doorway, knowing there was a breeze from the way the morning glory swayed around the trellis, and tried to remember what grass felt like beneath ones feet. He was unable to leave the house. He could, if he tried with all he had, stand just a step or two on the back veranda, still beneath the roof, but the doorway was really a far as he could usually go. It infuriated him, and filled him with longing at the same time. Ghost dynamics were not a science he knew. Of course he dealt with the occult in his flesh and blood days, tarot cards and necromancy. He knew there was SOMEthing beyond death, but now that his Christian worldview had been shattered, he had no way of knowing what that was, despite being a part of it.

Though William could step straight through him, Jezabel sidestepped as he came back to the house, Taboo bounding along the grass with a bowl of water and plenty of shade. Gliding unknown behind him, Jezabel followed Cooper, watching him put away several days worth of groceries into his ice box, so many strange things Jezabel didn't know the name of alongside a bunch of bright, appetizing fruit that he liked to pulverize together with ice and milk every morning. God how he longed to taste it! Pineapple and pear and fresh strawberries, thick frothy milk. If he could, he'd be salivating. 

Vegetables and noodles were fried up with a brown sauce in some tall, wide, curved pan on the stove, served over rice and eaten out on the porch while tossing a fuzzy green ball to Taboo, who sniffed eagerly at his bowl every time she brought it back to him. Much to Jezebels delight, Cooper did indulge her once or twice, handing her a noodle after he'd licked off the sauce. She licked her chops eagerly with each morsel, and at the doorway, Jezabel was sure he was glowing. Eventually, he began that training routine he'd been keeping up for days now, using a food reward to try and entice her to obey at his command of 'sit'. Back, back, back over her head he'd pull her treat, till she had no choice but to plant her floofy butt down upon the grass.

Jezabel clapped his hands once with delight at what a genius his dog was, and both of them whipped their heads around suddenly in his direction, his eyes wide, her ears perked.

"Fuck birds flying in the window again," Cooper sighed, shaking out his shaggy brown hair and scraping his fork against the inside of his bowl to capture the last little grains of rice. Mortified, Jezabel retreated from the doorway, slipping his unearthly form into the shadows, just toeing the edge of the sunshine. Sometime he forgot, that he could sometimes he heard, and not just when he picked up and threw something. It's just...God, it had been so long since he'd been able to make any noise on his own accord, and it startled him as much as it did his house guest. Motionless he held his hands together, tugging them beneath his chin as though deep in fervent prayer. A statue as William walked past, rinsed out his bowl, and sat his pan to soak in a froth of yellow dish soap and hot water. Poor man, he had no idea that he walked within a meter of Jezabel each time he circled his kitchen, and Jezabel had no plans to give any further indication. Instead he continued his gentle floating, all but stalking as Cooper fixed up a pan of his bottles, supplies, brushes and such, carting it upstairs under one arm. Onto the second floor, and. then up to the attic, which had Jezabel bristling; he didn't like where he was suspecting this was going and, true to suspect, William started music playing on his phone as he wrenched open every window in the attic, rolled up the bloodstained rug, and began to drag it down the narrow stairs.

"What the bloody hell are you doing to my room?!" Jezabel crowed petulantly, stomping after him as though he had any ability to halt his progress. "That's MINE!" Cooper paid him no mind, sitting the bundle upright on the foot of the stairs, and stepped right through him on his way back up; he shivered once, the hairs raising on his arm in goosebumps.

"Damn it you fucking American bastard, what are you doing?! You got your own country why are you storming back here to take ours back, damn it!"How he wished his feet made any noise on the floorboards beneath him! In horror, he watched Mr. Cooper repeat this process next with the photos on the wall, careful to not cut himself on the well-rusted wires, then the candle, the chair, the dried and caked medicine bottles, whos labels he squinted to read. One armload at a time he took things downstairs, emptying out this space, HIS space! Jezabel was growing livid. There were no treasures here, not like in his crawlspace, but this was still HIS ROOM! He was...quite certain he had died here, Cassian had nursed him here, soothed his pains and bid him to eat. Afterwards, he had sat in here, in this corner of the attic, on a nightly basis, crying, unable to feel Jezabel next to him, trying to offer the same comfort he had been given. The attic, warmest in the house, with the best breeze for fresh air; he'd carried him up here in his arms,. and down he had gone the same way, even as the heat ebbed from his fevered body and soaked into Cassians. How dare William, who pretended to care so lovingly for the home, just up and disturb this almost solemn place?!

When he began to dismantle the bed frame, Jezabel was beside himself, sending a volley of silent curses at him, running his hands over Coopers arms to chill him, but the hard work, it seemed, warmed him. Finally, he took the headboard first, the ornately welded piece clasped firmly under one arm as he made his way back downstairs.

"You selfish little bastard that's not YOURS!" he roared, and grabbed for the antique upon instincts; he hadn't expected to actually touch it, not even for a moment, let alone grab such a solid hold on it. Solid enough to stop Cooper's footsteps several stairs from the bottom, solid enough for him to turn around to see what he'd got caught on.

Seven steps above him, Jezabel watched an all-too familiar look cross his housemates face, a stunned disbelief, followed by whites rimming all the way around hazel, his shoulders curling up to his ears as he inhaled and, finally, a gut-wrenching, unholy scream as he dropped the bed frame and went tearing down the hall, tripping over the first few steps on his way down, screaming all the while.

Calm as anything, Jezabel carried his bed frame back up to his room.

)o(

Night began to fall, and the sky was already bruise colored by the time Ezra arrive. Actually, almost perfectly matching the new bruise William had forming across his arm where he'd landed on his way down the stairs.

He all but attacked the car before it even stopped.

"It takes TWENTY NINE MINUTES for you to drive your house to mine, I Googled it!" he cried out, and Ezra just scoffed.

"Yeah, maybe if we were in I Am Legend and I was the only one on the road," he retorted. "Besides, I brought donuts, because you sounded like you were panicking and donuts makes things better."

William accepted a raspberry claw but didn't eat it; he was too busy gesturing wildly at the house, continuing to scream the same nonsense he had over the phone.

"And you're SURE you didn't see, like, just curtains blowing?"

"Damn it Ezra, are there any curtains on that stairway?!" he yelled, finally cramming a jelly-filled bite into his mouth, chewing angrily. "I was at the bottom of the stairs, all I should see looking up is brown wood, brown wallpaper, and a glass bulb, that's it, but NO, no, there was something- someone- standing on the stairs with me, grabbing hold of the bed frame!"

"So did you call the cops?" his friend asked around a mouthful of chocolate glaze, and he shook his head immediately.

"It wasn't a PERSON, Ezra, I could see right through her! And her hair was wild, all white curls everywhere, long night gown, and GOD she looked mad!"

Ezra grew quiet for a time, savoring his chocolate donut, before swallowing and saying with hesitancy, "William...you don't believe in ghosts."

"No, but what's the other option? I'm going insane?!"

"Or-" nibble. "Or or, you're almost forty now and you're just tired form the stress of early renovation."

"When i'm over tired and stressed, I grind my teeth and pick at things, Ezra, I've never hallucinated before!" he argued back, sighing and leaning against the stair railing on his porch. "I know what I saw, and it was THERE, it was...not solid but like, it wasn't just sometime out of the corner of my eye, you know? I LOOKED at it, and it looked back at me and it looked PISSED."

"You know, the who you gonna call question? Usually isn't answered by 'my ex boyfriend', but lucky you, Will, I watch a lot of Ghost Adventures, and my Dad's house has been haunted since 1997, so you have the right man."

Peering over his glasses and nervously nibbleing the last of his donut, Cooper eyed his friend with hesitancy.

"And what are you gonna do?"

"Not me, we. We, Will, are gonna have ourselves a little ghost hunt."


	9. Heard and Not Seen

Ezra hadn't been joking when he'd quipped that he was quite the fan of Ghost Adventures; this much was evident by how, within two hours, they had amassed an amateur ghost hunting set worthy of making any Youtuber wannabe seethe with jealousy. William watched his friend in a 24/7 pound store scrounge up a knock-off Scrabble set, dozens of cheap tea lights, a length of scratchy acrylic yarn in an offensive lime green and 2 packs of AA batteries. Their phones would more than suffice for impromptu EVP sessions, and in several rooms about the house Ezra tucked scraps of paper and ballpoint pens, as though whoever- or whatever-was prowling the halls might want to stop and request the addition of some Booberry cereal to the grocery list. 

"Are we having game night with my ghost?" He asked of his friend as he spilled the plastic Not Scrabble tiles onto the card table, surrounding them with four candles, one on each corner.

"Oh it's your ghost now?" Ezra laughed with his dense accent. "You went from non-believer to smitten pretty quickly!"

"Oh naturally," he deadpanned with a raised eyebrow. "Real beauty she was, I'm ready to go full 'The Ghost and Mrs. Muir' on this shit."

"Aw, I love that movie!"

The green yarn was unfurled and tossed about the floor like the most emaciated tangle of snakes Cooper had ever seen, while more was looped over spare nails and screws still jutting out of unfinished walls.

"Ghosts are weak, really, unless you got some poltergeist shit going on," Ezra noted knowledgeably. "And if she fought you for that bed frame, she's probably wore out. These can tangle and knot with just a little nudge."

A vague nod was Coopers only response, hardly believing he had gotten himself wrapped up in this. With French vanilla coffee brewing in the kitchen and all the lights on, and with a friend nearby, his little encounter on the stairs was already feeling years away, and he was beginning to feel a twinge of shame at his knee-jerk panic. Perhaps, just perhaps, Ezra's first assertion was the correct one, and he was simply overworked and over stressed, and his tired mind had played a trick on him. After all, hadn't he already been a bit jumpy from his encounter with the window the day before? Ripe old age of 39 and already he was losing his damn mind! Maybe it really WOULD be a good idea to make this house his newest home, take a few years off his flipping;l provided it wasn't haunted, of course.

Mugs of steaming coffee in hand, Ezra bade him to sit down on the floor with him, in the morning room which, Cooper had said, was going to get a full sanding and revarnish anyway, so he had no issues letting him mark it up with chalk, though he groaned when he realized what he was writing.

"A fucking spirit board, Ezra?"

Ezra gave a dark-eyed glare, shushing him up as he finished the alphabet, sighing once and wiping the heal of his hand across a few non-English letters as his mind wandered.

"Don't knock it, Will. It's got a cheesy rap thinks to bad movies and Parker Brothers, but ti's a tool same as any other."

"Hasbro."

"Pardon?"

"The Ouji board. that's a Hasbro thing, not Parker Brothers."

"....why do you KNOW THIS?" Ezra groaned, tossing the chalk dismissively behind him. For a planchet, he had pilfered a glass from Cooper's cupboard, turned upside down. With a pointed look, he invited Cooper to join him in placing his hands upon its concave bottom.

"This is nuts."

"So is seeing ghosts on the stairs."

That shut him up well and good, and he kept his tongue bit as Ezra began his rag-tag seance. Cooper tried, he really did, to treat this seriously, but Ezra seemed to take it TOO seriously, which just cracked him up.

"Is there anyone here with us?" He called into the still echoey room. Silence. "Is someone here who would like to speak with us?" Again, not a sound to be heard, save for a gust of air as Cooper tried to not laugh.

"...Anyone here wanna take a swipe at Will?" Ezra teased, and a sudden, half panicked jolt went through him, and Cooper startled, looking pointedly at the board, just DARING the glass to move. Immediately shame overtook him, and he groaned at his own skittishness.

"Is there anyone here who would like to shut Ezra up?" he countered back, removing one hand to sip at his coffee.

The planchet remained still. As it should. Jezabel found this whole charade just about as ridiculous as Cooper did, and he was every bit as entertained. He sat beside the two, cross-legged as they were, the watery eels of his hair whispering against their cheeks without them even knowing. Spiritism alive and well in the 21st century, humans really DON"T ever change! He laughed lightly to himself, watching them go about their routine. How queer, to not even have a true audience to show off his otherworldly powers! Nobody around to con out of a hapenny or two! He found this Ezra fellow entertaining at the very least, almost as endearing as Cooper.

"Casper, if you're out there, let yourself be known!"

"This is your bloody house William, take this seriously will you?!"

Mr. Cooper was a unique man, one Jezabel had grown content observing the past 3 weeks or so; he'd tried very hard to look at the dates on that telephone of his every day, between looking at that pretty picture of his dog, and sought to commit them to memory and SOME sort of order. About 3 weeks, give or take, and so far he still hadn't run screaming from the house. Well. Not permanently, at least, and this intrigued Jezabel, who had long grown use to men cowering form him in fright. Honestly it was a nice change. Few feared him in life, for longer than the few moments between the realization they were about to die and the actual final beating of their heart. Perhaps a few of his underlings at Delilah were wary of him, but Jezabel was a caged animal, really, a beat kept tight upon a leash and muzzle, and they knew it. The grip Alexis had to his neck kept him from being too intimidating to anyone, so it was a powerful thing, to wield power after death he could only dream about in life.

He watched as Mr. Cooper shivered once, and reached for his coffee again, only to scowl at an inexplicably cold cup. Jezabel grinned, self-satisfied.

"I'm gonna nuke this," he sighed to Ezra, his knee clicking as he stood. Jezabel rose to follow, leaving Ezra alone to play with ghosts who weren't there.

Mr. Cooper seemed to like the house. Jezabel had been staring over his shoulder at that....other thing that looked like his phone, only much bigger, with a flat sort of typewriter affixed to the base, as he looked at picture after picture of the loveliest homes. Familiar ones, with beautiful porches and wide yards. True, the decor often looked out of date to Jezabel's eyes, having been born long after that aesthetic movement, but it was better than the sleek, plain, shoddy pieces more recent tenants seemed to favor. Over and over he watched Mr. Cooper press a button labeled "buy now" or "order" and, like magic, days later it would arrive via a large truck; rolls of peacock paper, a beautiful oriental rug large enough to sprawl out on. He felt a pang of nostalgia as he looked it over at Mr. Coopers side, the pattern somewhat familiar, and he had a flash in his mind of a pair of small blonde children, girls, or very young boys, a game of spillkins between them. No names came to mind, no faces, and the rug was quickly rolled back into its plastic and stored away, but the vague half-memory remained. 

Vibrations rattled the air like an earthquake, as audible as anything every could be to one without ears, and Mr. Cooper removed his coffee from the little hot box, took a sip, and nodded.

"Anything from my new girlfriend yet?" he called as he jaunted back into the room.

Mr. Cooper had nice taste, and he bought him a puppy, so that was nice. Jezabel just wished he would stop calling him a girl.

)o(

"What is your name?"

"...Are you alone?..."

"...Do you have anything you want to tell us?..."

Though Ezra told him they were unlikely to pick up on anything not on the recorder, William listened intently after each question anyway; besides, that was just what happened when one had to be so still and silent. Otherwise, they could pollute the recording and fuck up any evidence they might catch. Though by this point, he was becoming more and more convinced they would find nothing. As they swept the second floor, poking into old bedrooms, and the questions began to grow monotonous, he even grew almost bored. Until, that is, they reached the attic stairs. The very empty, very free-of-iron-bed-frames attic stairs, which was where he had his second breakdown of the evening.

"I LEFT IT THERE, Ezra, I swear!" he howled, not careing that his panic would be caught on tape.

"Are you sure you ddn't just throw it away in fright?" Ezra wanted to know, shining his phones flashlight onto the dark steps as though the frame was just somehow hiding in the shadows.

"Threw it all the way up 12 steps Ezra I don't THINK so!" he cried back, pacing in the middle of the hall, eyeing the stairway with suspicion and no small amount of terror. Ezra sighed, shook his head, and climbed the stairs on his own, only to re-emerge within a minute with much slower footsteps.

"...It's still set up, Will," he told him hesitantly from the bottom stair, as though he himself was barely believing the situation. Whether he doubted what his eyes had just seen or he doubted WIlliam's account of the afternoon, he couldn't be sure. "Its in the hidden room..."

"...I had it halfway down the stairs, Ezra!" he all but shrieked, his voice the highest it had been since puberty. "How the hell did...was...Ezra am I losing my fucking mind?"

Eager to console his friend, Ezra took the stronger roll and pulled him close for just a moment, clapping his shoulder roughly. "Course not, Will. Maybe you DO have something more poltergeist-y?"

..."Because THAT makes me feel better, Ezra!"

)o(

For the last forty minutes those two had been talking into their phones, drinking, and swearing, but as far as Jezabel was able to tell, there wasn't anyone on the adjoining line to speak back to them. Honestly he was amazed nobody had sent these two off to an asylum yet, but he tempered his appraisal with the bitter reminder that he likely just didn't understand what they were doing. That, above so much else, irritated Jezabel to no end. Wasn't it unfair enough that his own history was moth-eaten and crumbing away more and more every year, he had to also be taunted with an evolving world far outside his reach? Too many years he had passed away in sleep, himself feeling like the turntable in the attic. Freshly turned, he would float and dance and make as much noise as he pleased, but the longer he went without anyone nearby, or anything to draw a bite to eat from, the more lethargic he went, his own crank turning slower and slower until, stillness. Silence. 

At least, that was his working theory. He had no more knowledge of his own being as he did the world around him. Alive, he knew, he had been a doctor, though what he studied specifically eluded him, dancing out of reach along with blonde haired little girls and the name of a man with a pocktwatch and a bad haircut that often upset him so much that candles flickered around him. Once upon a time he had known the human body in all its bleak, grisly beauty, but the soul, that was a mystery to him even now, and he had to simply make due with collecting facts as he stumbled upon them. Mr. Coopers hot mug, for example, drew him in enticingly time after time, and chilled the drink quickly. His hot box was just lovely to be around, as was the large boiler he'd had a man install down in the basement (far away from his crawlspace, thankfully!) and, more than once, he had hovered around the door as Mr. Cooper took a long, scalding shower. Oh of course he knew it was vulgar at best and an indication of sodomy at worst, but it was WARM, he couldn't help it! Heat, energy, these things drew him in so completely, ensnaring him like a loop trap. They made him feel strong, powerful, the closest facsimile to life that he was sure he would ever again muster. If he couldn't explain what he was, he could at least ENJOY what he was.

"...Did you die here?..." an hour after William had his little tantrum at the attic their questions continued, and at this point he could no longer play ignorant. They were, obviously, talking to him.

He snorted. "Pretty sure I did."

"...Did you die up in the attic?..."

"Yes."

"...Was that your blood on the floor?..."

"Naw, it was my last victims," he snit, resting his head on his palm as though he had any muscles to tire.

On and on the two of them went, walking the length of the house over and over, attic to bedrooms to first floor to basement and back up the way they came, the only pause in their routine coming once Ezra noticed the portraits set up sporadically around the home. 

"Cute kids," he said stoically, pointing to a heavily faded family portrait in an antique frame. 

"First owners of the house," Mr. Cooper nodded, pleasantly gazing upon his photograph, as Jezabel gazed upon his own face. Glad for more distraction from his ebbing and flowing panic, he seemed so genuinely happy and interested in such an old portrait, and Jezabel noted more than once how nicely it had been redone, with extreme care for preservation. "The Holloways. Poor as anything, went bankrupt. That was a problem of the era; it was shameful to live above your station but even more so to fall from grace."

Ezra's eyes swept over the portrait with mild interest, nothing like the fervor in Mr. Coopers own, as though he were looking at a photograph of his own wife and children. At his side, Jezabel stared too. This was his favorite one in the house so far; he especially enjoyed the oldest boy, and his stubborn little look of pride, as though daring the photographer to make him stand there one moment longer. It filled Jezabel with a sense of longing, one he supposed could only be homesickness. The only other portrait he'd seen so far that gave him any such feeling was the mother and child hung up in the parlor, her face beautiful but filled with such a heavy sadness. Something twisted deep in his gut any time he floated by her, as though in mourning for whatever lined her face with such exhaustion and sorrow.

"...Are you featured in this photograph?..."

"No."

"...Is the woman in this picture you?..."

"I'd have some special questions for my father if it was."

"Hey..." Ezra finally lowered his phone, speaking to William directly. "Have you got any more of these photos around? The really old ones, from before the room was sealed up?"

"Er..a few, yeah. Haven't had time to get them all re framed yet."

They followed, one known and one unknown, into a room Jezabel was sure was once a study, to a locked roll top desk where he kept the pictures.

"Paranoid much?" Ezra teased as he fished the key off his key ring. The look Cooper shot back was acidic.

"I bought a fucking DOG because of the weird shit in this house, Ezra, don't mock me." With a flourish, still obviously proud and excited despite his anxiety, Cooper began to unfurl his collection, in order, from the young woman and her friends in the 70's to the family in the fifties and back further decade by decade. Ah, Jezabel remembered them well. The young woman wasn't so bad; her long dresses and layers of lace skirts reminded him somewhat of more proper clothing, even if she was a bit of a tart in his opinion. The family before her had a wretch of a father slash husband that Jezabel didn't take well too. He was far too taken with drink and more than once he'd slapped his wife around. Jezabel started lurking in shadows and door frames around that time; he didn't much care for the woman herself at all, of course, but he'd long developed a dislike for loud, cantankerous or violent men, though it had taken an "accidental" fall down the stairs before the man ran screaming from the home, damning it all to hell. He smirked, glowing faintly with pleasure, and he saw Mr. Cooper at his side blink once more than needed.

"Here is the newest I have before the renovation," he told Ezra, holding up the Edwardian woman, her hair pulled up in a large curled poof. True to his former pattern, Ezra began to speak into his telephone, expecting it to reach this woman's spirit. Jezabel smiled; now there was a woman who had taken no shit from anyone. She lived here for sometime with her husband, and had 5 children before moving out sometime before short dresses and cropped hair came into fashion during a time when fires lit the skies each night and the vibrations from noise assaulted Jezabel in a terrifying way for what felt like years on end.

After several questions, Ezra remained quiet for a long while, just focusing on the woman's pretty, pouting face, as he held his telephone out towards nothing.

With hesitancy, unsure whether he shoudl break the silence, Cooper unfolded the paper around the next photograph, and Jezabel again peered over his shoulder, only to feel like he did one time before when he accidentally ran through a wall box filled with buzzing wires. Something shot through him as Mr. Cooper revealed the portrait, and cried out,

"That's mine!",

So loudly he was amazed neither heard with their bare ears.

Gliding through Coopers arms, sensing his shiver around him, Jezabel peered closely at the photograph. It was, undeniably, him, he knew his own face even after a century with no mirror! It was the only time he and father had sat for a portrait together. He was 20 years old, and had just finished up a his medical program at Trinity- even all this time later he remembered the name, and the pride he had felt upon receiving his degree at that age. Of course he was educated elsewhere after that, though memories grew fainter. Still, Father had shown some small bit of smug pride in his eldest sons accomplishment, had the portrait taken and, if Jezabel recalled, didn't beat him for some weeks after, despite him being in rather a rebellious streak at the time. His hair was shorter at the time but still uncommonly long, curls tipping just around his shoulders. How had Father not chopped it off and accused him of pride?

"Are you either of the men in this photograph?" Ezra called out, despite Cooper having assured him he had undoubtedly seem a woman.

"Yes! Yes, I'm here, that's me!" Jezabel cried out, beaming, unable to take his eyes off the picture. He had just recently begun to wear glasses at this point as well, and was still getting use to them, the chain always in his way. That vest, with the stripes, he recalled that as well. He lost weight not long after this picture, and rarely wore it after. 

"Do you know either of these men?"

"I just TOLD YOU it's me, you ignorant fop!"

"I hope she does cause I've yet to figure out who they are. Too late for the Holloway's to have known them. Must have been an uncle to the family in 1910."

"Bullshit I don't even remember her name!"

Unable to hear him, though, William took him through 2 more photos of men he didn't know, one of whom was already dead in his portrait, and stacked them away carefully, locking them back into the drawer.

Jezabel huffed; they asked a lot of questions for men who didn't seem to want to listen for answers.

)o(

Around 2 am Ezra finally went home; he wanted to stay and go through the recordings, but he had an 11 am summer seminar the next day, and needed at least some facsimile of sleep if he was going to function. William, however, ran on his own schedule, which could go all night if he was fixated on a particular task. Which, lo and behold, he was. He fixed another cup of coffee (iced this time, with milk and a little brown sugar, since he seemed to keep forgetting his hot mugs) and began to play back what he had recorded on his telephone as he read over his emails. There was over an hour of it total, but with headphones on and turned up loud, he was sure that he would miss nothing, even while multitasking.

Ezra's voice filled in through the wires, slightly hissy with breath, as he began to ask questions to a seemingly very silent audience.

"Is anyone here? .....would anyone like to speak to us?" over and over he asked variants of these questions. William clicked through Facebook, 'like'ing his cousins photos of her trip to see her boyfriend in Canada, filing through the dregs of political drama and his mothers recipes. 

"Are you a member of the Holloway family?" no response. A sweet mustache coated his upper lip as he drew from his cup, and he licked the froth away absentmindedly. A college friend had a stream of about 37 pictures of their new baby; William commented his congratulations.

"Are you the woman in this photograph? ... Do you know this woman? ..."

Shuffling between the silence.

"Here's my next, Ezra. 1880s, maybe nint-"

"That's mine!"

A sip of sweet coffee caught in his throat, and William sputtered the pale creamy liquid all over his laptop screen, trying to gasp in a breath between violent coughs.

"What the bloody hell!?" he panted to himself with choke induced tears in his eyes. He snatched up his phone and tapped his finger on the screen, easing the ticker back a half minute. Intently he listened, paying close attention to each sound the recorder picked up.

"That's mine!" Not his own voice, nor Ezra's, but that was obvious to him the first time around. This was higher than theirs, lighter, and with an accent neither American nor Russian. It was hard to say with only two words, but the rounded tone to "mine" sounded quite commonly English. 

William shivered, but continued to rewind the track, playing it over and over, before finally letting the rest of the track play.

"Do you know either of these men?"

"-just TOLD YOU-"

The second sentence was more garbled than the first, lurching in and out of focus as though it were fragments of a song caught between a turning radio dial. Static swallowed words on either end, which he could excuse, had they been using a cassette player and not a digital recorder; nowhere else on the tracks was there such a loud, popping crackle.

William Cooper did not sleep a moment that night.


	10. J-E-Z-A-B-E-L

Over and over again Cooper replayed those 2 hours of recorded, rewinding the supposed EVP until every nuance was welded into his skull. By the light of dawn, he had hoped, would come a rational explanation for that unaccounted for voice. Surely without the fears that shadows brought, without that midnight paranoia, he would remember he or Ezra fucking around, answering 'for' the alleged ghost, but no revelations came. Before him sat an iced coffee long melted, the opposite of his usual problem, but all semblance of appetite had left him. How...how the hell could this be real? Ghosts did not, he was sure, exist! He knew this as surely as he knew his own name. William was an educated man, only about 3 semesters away from a doctorate, if he cared to return as a student rather than a professor! He wasn't even much for religion, though he held some vestiges of his childhood Christianity in terms of what he thought was moral or illicit or what some semblance of an afterlife might be like, but those were all lofty ideas carried out more in theory than in practice. Kneel, stand, drink the wine at Christmas with his family, cringe at the life sized man tortured on the cross out of creep factor from Uncanny Valley, not from some euphoric spiritual experience. Ghosts did NOT fit into Coopers worldview, physical or metaphysical.

Then again, hearing disembodied voices tended to only have one or two other explanations, none of which were any more thrilling. He was far too old to likely develop any form of Schizophrenia (he'd checked; his Google history was quite varied that night) but just in case, he had emailed the files over to Ezra, and was now waiting his reply. The curse of his mouse hovered over 'refresh' on his browser, clicking the recycling icon over and over again in anticipation from his spot on the back veranda. Taboo ran about on her long chain, near enough to run up to see him, to receive love and pets and nose kisses before leaping back to chase more bugs. She was suppose to help him feel more safe alone in this house, dammit, so why was he filled with such dread?

)o(

Mournfully Jezabel peered past the curtains and onto the veranda where William sat on his computer and playing with his dog, and by his Jezabel meant his OWN. He'd been out there since sunup, tiptapping away at that thing, running endlessly towards some nirvana of knowledge Jezabel could make an educated guess at. Oh god had Mr. Cooper been freaked out listening to his voice on that recording, but Jezabel himself? Was equal parts amazed and delighted, with a dash of shock thrown in. Questions of how he was able to make such a sound buzzed through his mind, but were tempered with his sheer delight alone, and he wondered if he might be glowing from happiness for all the looks Mr. Cooper went flickering up at the window. That may just be his edginess and paranoia, though, and Jezabel could hardly fault the poor man. He had just heard a ghost, after all, and Jezabel grinned even more widely at his roommates, raising a hand to his mouth as though to chew on his nail. Mr. Cooper was turning out to be even more fun than he'd thought, and he was starting to hope his resolve and nerve could hold out just a little bit longer. At some point over the past weeks Jezabel had grown accustomed to the noise and business, and didn't want to face an empty house again, not yet. 

)o(

When the ping of a new email lit up his phone an hour later, Cooper practically threw his coffee cup across the room in horrified excitement, praying it wasn't just another add for hot singles in his area wanting to chat. To his relief, it was Ezra, and his response was a garbled mess than belied his own excitement.

"Holy HSIT Will that's a legit EVP, holy crap. I'll check mine tonite, but I'm heading out of town for the weenkens so I can't come over! U k by urself tonite?"

Fuck. Well. There went his plans for a sleepover, which didn't help his anxiety, but the fact that Ezra heard it too was a balm to his frazzled nerves. For a moment, at least. This crossed auditory hallucinations off the list of possible explanations, but that seemed to leave only one other, and he was none to thrilled to examine this possibility with any real fervor. The voices on the tape, the bed frame he knew he'd hauled down the steps, twice seeing a pale-haired visage, the footsteps and noises and that BLOODY record player...one even was creepy, two, a break in, three was the result of stress, but there was only so long Cooper could hear the hooves and still say, horses, when there were black and white strips stampeding by him. 

Haunted. Just the word sounded dramatic, calling to mind images of...well, of grand old Victorian manors, of see-through women in white nightgowns, of noises in the night and voices that couldn't be explained. But those images were planted by books, by Dickens and Lovecraft and King, not by reality, right? On the other hand, as a historian, he knew it was a loop. Yes, yes, life imitated art, lore was shaped by stories, books, movies and, most recently, the internet. Slenderman, Jeff the Killer, they'd become a part of the younger generations mythos as easily as Pennywise, the ghosts of Christmas and Beowulf had for generations past, but by the same hand, art imitated life. The old adage that every legend held a grain of truth wasn't to be completely ignored. He'd once read a fascinating account of how vampirism may have been borne to explain untreated early diabetes. The gums receded, giving the teeth a fang-like and blood appearance, the victims were pale and ravenous from the most fucked up of insulin and sugar levels, they slept like the dead. There was some legitimacy to it, he'd just assumed that ghosts were the same, born first in the mind of the mentally ill...he did not believe himself to suffer from more than the occasional bought of anxiety and depression. There was no history of severe disturbance in his family, and now they had evidence...with a chuckle, feeling half-done from exhaustion, he played it again. If he heard this on a TV show he'd assume outright it was staged, just an actor speaking, their voice distorted, all gimmicks for rating. They had no such drive, and he knows for a fact there had been nothing and no one there to make that voice. 

"That's mine!"

William Cooper was haunted.

)o(

That night he and Ezra spent 3 hours on Skype, the Russian talking a fucking mile a minute from excitement, because he had his own audio bite to share. 

"You aren't gonna fucking believe this Will, listen, listen," he screamed as soon as Skype stopped ringing on both ends. With his phone's volume full blast, he held it against his mic-

"Is that your blood on the floor?"

"....-Victim-"

Cooper was glad he peed before Ezra called or he might have lost control of his bladder then. The voice came through clear, even despite the distortion of traveling through two separate devices.

"That...She was...was she murdered?!"

"Sounds like a He to me, Will," Ezra put in, picking the less important part to comment on, if Cooper was to be asked. "And it DID say the portrait of the two men was 'mine' "

"Honestly Ezra I don't care if it's a purple spotted elephant from Venus, I just want-"

"You'd care if it meant you had more than one ghost wouldn't you?"

Again with the bladder blessings. William shivered once, and patted his thigh for Tabby to come over, and she did, pressing her paws eagerly onto his thigh. 

Ezra continued, "I mean, you might, you said you saw a chick, right?"

William nodded, hesitant and unsure, as his eyes gazed across hit table to were he had set up the photograph, the one their voice had claimed, of the young man and what was in all likelihood his father, posed sit-and-stand behind one another. Both were quite handsome, if his queer little opinion was to be asked, both in glasses and dressed in what he could tell even in sepia was VERY well made clothing. He eyed the length of the youngers hair, brushing his shoulders in soft, open curls, obviously a very pale blonde. It was horrifically long for a man his age in the 1880s or 90's, and to get away with such eccentricity, he must have been wealthy.

"I mean...I saw someone with really long hair. Being a Victorian house I just assumed that-"

"That you weren't haunted by the spirit of a flower-child hippie?" Ezra laughed, and William managed a meager grin in response.

"Yeah, that...but this picture, the man in it already has such a long cut...I dunno, it's not like I really got a good look at their face, I was too busy trying to imitate Usain Bolt, but the idea of having a wannabe Oscar Wild was far preferable to hosting a whole party full of spirits."

Ezra nodded eagerly in agreement, checking out the pictures he'd snapped on his phone. "Well now you gotta figure out who the men in the photo are, you know."

Cooper groaned, planting his head onto his table. He hated IRL image searching, it was a complete BITCH.

"Do you know how long I'm gonna spend in a library for the SLIVER of a chance to figure out who they are?" he demanded of his friend, but he just shrugged.

"If they were as wealthy as they look I bet they were socialites or industrialists of some kind."

Cooper just groaned. Yeah sure, sure, but even if that was true, he'd be pouring over grainy, blotchy newspaper portraits, trying to tell whether or not any of them bore any vague resemblance to these men; his only hope was that the long hair was an on going fashion statement and he was a well-known fop that frequented gossip columns.

"Are you sure you can't stay a while and help me research?" he wheedled of Ezra with a toothy grin, but he shook his head furiously."

"Nope, I have a 7 am train by friend. "and I'm not much for research anyway. I teach advanced calculus, not English."

William flipped him off, the American way, and sighed as they said their good nights, and he peered around his room; his repairs were going to be even further behind schedule now, but he supposed it was worth it, at least somewhat, if he could find out with whom he shared these four walls.

)o(

Reverse image search was wizardry on the internet. In real life, it was a veritable hell and Cooper hated himself for undertaking this task. 3 days now, THREE, he had devoted the bulk of his time to pouring over what felt like thousands of photographs, trying to pick out the faces of those two men in the portrait now propped on a built in shelf, looking horribly out of place against the green and yellow peeling paper. He had his own online catalog, amassed from all the photos hed collected and donated through the years, all the ones he'd found or been given, all of which were in heavily varying states of decay. Some were nearly pristine, smooth, somber faces and coiffed hair and all buttons in place, whereas others had become so overexposed with time that they looked like ghosts themselves, captured forever by the camera lens. The younger man, the blonde, he'd be easier to pick out; not only was his hair distinct, but he had extremely pale eyes that refused to fall into shadow in the photograph, and a distinct, narrow, angular face. Add in the fact that both men were obviously quite wealthy and seemed to share some close, intimate connection, and he was...hopeful, despite his frustration.

No...no, not him either...no, he had the wrong nose...too curly, not curly enough. One picture after another flashed on his screen as he clicked the 'next' button in his image catalogs, from his laptop to his Cloud to his external hard drive. He scoured every website he knew to bookmark, both public and membership-required, and nearly cried when his weary eyes finally traced over the lines and planes of a face he was SURE was familiar. Literally, his eyes began to water, but that might have also been strain and exhaustion, he didn't care. All he cared about was the portrait of the severe but handsome man that appeared in a newspaper article from 1889-

"Earl Alexis Hargreaves, London, Makes Sizable Donation to Medical College."

Pen and paper in hand, he scrawled down the name, one that rang vaguely familiar to the Victoriaphile. A title of Earl or Count held little lawmaking or governing power by this era of history, but the social power it held was immeasurable. They had more money to throw around to their favored causes than most of even the upper class could fathom and as such, their names were familiar backdrops in many of the diaries and letters William so fervently sought and poured over. Even a middle class housewife might gossip in her correspondence about such-and-such's young sons or daughters coming of age, or gain a sense of moral Methodist superiority by snubbing such a nobleman's lavish parties. Lord Hargreaves, from what little he could force his memory to cough up, was an intellectual, died fairly young, childless? No...no he had a kid, he thought.

Sure to earn his black-belt in Google-fu soon for all his research, William typed in "Alexis Hargreaves," "Earl Hargreaves" "Count Alexis Hargreaves" and every variant therein he could think of, but it seemed the man was of little interest to modern collections of Victorian knowledge, because aside from Ancestry.com and another site to track ones surname ("Are you related to royalty? Find out here!") all he could find was a relic from the early 2000's, a black and red site pieces together like a middle schoolers computer science project. The banner at the top held an engraving of Jack the Ripper, and the site seemed to be a gathering of Victorian deaths, murders, and mysteries. Though littered with dead hyperlinks and long deleted images, most of the text remained unchanged, and a read-through finally revealed the paragraph in question.

"Noble Murders", read the sub headline, and several paragraphs in he found,

"Alexis Hargreaves- 1845-1891. Cause of Death-varied/unknown"

"You have my attention," William murmured to himself, easing closer to peer through his glasses.

"Alexis Hargreaves was born in London on November 1, 1845 to Bradly and Elissa Hargreaves, oldest son and second child for the couples eventual 9. At 19 he inherited his fathers title upon his death. in 1878 he married Lenora Crawford and the couple bore one son in 1879. Little is known about the Earl as he lives a very private life, but he was known as a charitable humanitarian and gave generously to medical colleges, country hospitals and donated to the upkeep of London's largest cemetery.

All accounts of Lord Hargreaves stops in 1891 and by all accounts, this was the year of his death, though for such a wealthy and loved figure, there is little detail known. Several accounts have him leaping from a window in the family home, presumably to his death, but there exist no reports of an investigation, funeral or burial. The plot originally said to hold his remains was found empty of even a casket in the 1970s, following a decade after the death of a family member, relation unknown. Another body found, unmarked, in the family mausoleum has been supposed to be his, but is far older than Lord Hargreaves would have been upon his death, and is thought instead to be a cousin. What makes the account even more eerie is one maids letter to her sister, regarding his young sons reactions to his fathers death. Apparently the 12 year old alternated between peels of laughter and inconsolable tears, and could be heard screaming at all hours that he had killed his father."

The sensational blurb ended, continued to a woman in the 90s who died of parasites in her face, and didn't name the child which just. Of course it didn't. Fav'd, bookmarked, screenshot, William saved the article, folded the paper with the name on it, and left his seat immediately, knowing he still had about 4 hours of library time at his university to research Alexis Hargreaves further.

)o(

Jezabel stared at the computer screen for God knows how long, reading over the article over and over. It was so short, and he memorized it within minutes, but he couldn't help but read it again. One son, it said. He bore one son in 1879.

)o(

White gloves creating a barrier between his skin and the delicate newspaper, William reeped the benefits of his position as tenuerd professor as he scoured the lines of dusty boxes in the oft neglected archives, beside himself as he slowly began to amass a trove of gems. Cain Hargreaves soon joined his fathers name on that little slip of paper, as well as a photocopy of his face, a startlingly pretty young man who looked very much like his father, same dark hair, light eyes, smug look that said he was on top of the fucking world. Poor thing died in 1897, just about to turn 18, in the Coronation Disaster as it had come to be known. His body was one of nearly 200 pulled form the wreckage of the collapsed building, he had read, buried in the family mausoleum and joined decades later by a half-sister. Well. Alexis had one LEGITIMATE child, it seemed, and one bastard daughter. Also, unlike daddy dearest, Cain was no stranger to the newspapers and seemed almost to revel in the spotlight, if his dramatic, over the top nature was an indication. It seemed hardly a month went by in his teen years that he wasn't nosing in on police investigations, murders or missing persons cases. Must have fancied himself a detective, it seemed, and gossip columns loved him. 

Cain, of course, being only 17, had died a bachelor and childless, and the title died with him. His sister, however, had married, mothered many children, none of whom would still be alive, but Cooper had to hope that maybe a grandkid or two or a great grrandkid had kept Gramma Mary's old things./ A historian could only hope! His only lament among this jackpot of information was that he still had no idea who it was Alexis Hargreaves had posed with in that photo, meaning, he had no idea who the most likely haunter of his house was. He could only hope maybe some survivors of the Gabriel family might be willing to make some friendly conversation.

)o(

As William approached his door and slid the key into the latch, he coudl hear Taboo going batshit inside, and he shook his head, and made a note to take her to the park after he made supper for the night. With a grocery sack in his hands, he hip-cheked the door open, and place dthe bag down to close it behidn him again.

"I'm sorry girl, I was only gone a couple hours. You need to go potty, Tabby? Gimme a....a second....oh my God..."

Though William had little in his house to fuck up, what sparse furnishing he had were, indeed, fucked up. His laptop was completely smashed, and obviously so, as the card table he had it set on was now halfway up the stairs, one leg bent irreparably. The half-empty coffee mug was not in ceramic shatters, dregs of creamy brown coffee splattered and dripping down the wallpaper. As he trod in carefully, he saw his sleeping back hurled clear into the kitchen, knocking over cereal boxes and several pans. All those bits of yarn, strung up still from Ezras ghost hunt, were now spiraled into knots and loops, some ripped from their nails altogether, and their candles were tossed about all corners of the first floor.

Taboo, obviously happy to see him, bounded up with lowered ears and a tucked tail. He did not scold her; he knew she didn't cause a mess like this, there was no way. She could have just chewed his pillow and send foam going into every crack of the floor. She couldn't throw anything or read the blinds to tear them from the windows! He noticed, once she stopped whining, that the house was disturbingly quiet.

"C...come on Tabby, lets get you outside," he whispered, his own barely audible voice far too loud in this tomb of a home. Quickly he tethered her to her chain, where she happily began to run off her nervous energy, because cautiously sticking his head back into the kitchen. Tick, tick, tick went his clock, the only noise. So softly he crept that even his footfalls were silent across the creaking floor as he took in more details of the carnage. A week ago he would have called the cops to report vandals, but right now, no, that, SOMEHOW, was not his first instinct. Ghost was a far more logical conclusion and he wanted to go check himself into a psych ward just for thinking that, but in the pit of his stomach, he just knew.

Water sloshed from the half-filled sink, produce thrown room to room; for a moment he was sure nothing escaped the tantrum that had occurred in his home, not a single item unturned, till his eyes came to rest on the portrait, THE portrait, which was still sat up upon its shelf, beautiful browns and creams against avocado green. It was untouched or, it seemed so at first, but as Cooper approached with a pounding heart and an unpleasant dampness beneath his arms, he saw something added to the display; a handful of plastic not-Scrabble tiles, the rest of which were plopped into a sharp pile on the floor, were arranged before the picture, arranged as careful as he managed an incorporeal being could manage.

J-E-Z-A-B-E-L


	11. Social Graces

Photographs documented into pixels what Cooper saw that evening. One after another he snapped away with his phone, at the upended table, the laptop, all the broken dishes and disheveled drapes. Knotted strings were seen from every angle. Finally, of course, he preserved onto not-film the letter tiles, spelled out into that single word. Jezabel. With a sigh, William looked from the screen to just above it at the real thing, which he knew he wouldn't' be able to bring himself to disturb for some time. Just the idea of touching them felt not only frightening, but almost disrespectful or sacrilegious, like swiping holy water from the font before Mass. If they didn't shock him with paranormal electricity, then surely his soul would be sucked out into the cheap beige plastic, dooming him to an eternity in a pound-store toy aisle game, passed around from yard sale to yard sale, becoming coated in the sticky remnants of jelly sandwiches and chicken nugget grease. With a shutter, William took one more picture, backed away slowly, and immediately began to upload them to every storage unit he had, as well as emailing them to Ezra. He wasn't sure if the accompanying words were at all intelligible but he gave no shits.

If someone had sent him photos of such a disaster, he would have thought it staged if he didn't know them well, or if they were the sort to need an inordinate amount of attention, or that they were the victims of a break in. 2 months ago if he'd found this when he arrived home he'd have called the police straight away, but there wasn't any shred of lingering doubt within his disquieted soul now. Strangely, though, there was also little fear. He chalked this up to shock more than anything, and he picked his laptop off the floor, righted the table again and plugged it in, praying to the fix-it fairies that it wasn't smashed. Behold, the beast roared to life with nary a crack to its plasma screen, and within a minute his login photo (Taboo) was flickering onto the screen and awaiting his password. Good, he wouldn't be out $900 dollars.

A bowl of Blue Buffalo was filled for Taboo, and she munched away her supper happily as her human began to tidy up the wreckage. Blessedly only a few things were actually broken, none of which couldn't be replaced at a second hand shop for a handful of notes, tops, but was still a chore he'd rather be without. He worked in silence, not wanting to turn on his usual music. The air was already heavy around him, from far more than murky summer heat, and somehow it occurred to him that the notes couldn't travel across such dense, soupy air. Instead the music would sink from his speakers and crawl across the floor, sluggish and sticky, and any echo that would reach his ears would only serve to further muffle his senses. William wanted to be alert, and his ears were perked as readily as his dogs for any bite of sound.

There was none, though. Jezabel was behaving himself now that he'd gotten his fit of temper out of the way. Just like the old days, he thought to himself with a satisfied smile as he recalled, in piecemeal, the wonderful terrors he could cause. Of course they brought him nothing but continued suffering once his father found what a mess he had made of his room and or office and or hospital, but the external marks on his skin were worth the catharsis of his inner pain. It was even better now without any sort of corporeal body to maim! All he could feel now was that inner pain. Once upon a time, he could almost recall, it was the physical that he preferred, a way to bring any sort of feeling to his numb existence, even opening them onto his skin in the early hours of the morning, but now, after death, physical suffering and the memories therein were an eternity away from him. The emotional pain was all he cared for, and the evidence of it was all over Coopers house and no longer within him. Suited Jezabel well. 

Mildly he stood off to the side, just away from the corner to the hallway; it wasn't as though he was in anyone's way, but it simply wasn't pleasant to have someone walk right through him. It stirred him about and he used far too much energy to tether himself back together, using who knows what sort of ghostly glue to bind his spirit back into its whole. Atop of that, Mr. Cooper already knew he was haunted; better not give him too many cold spots to chill his warm body, not right after this disaster. That was his only remorse over his fit; immediately in the aftermath he wondered if he'd gone too far, if Mr. Cooper, his new entertainment, would just up and leave. He'd halfheartedly attempted to right some of his wrongs, but once again that just circled back to the whole limited amount of energy thing. He was an otherworldly invalid who needed far more bed-rest than he was giving himself, but who had time to laze about in crawlspaces when there were puppies and strange men with stranger accents to observe?

Blessedly, his house guest seemed to take all of this in stride, which Jezabel soaked in with a curt nod. He was a spiritist, after all; he was probably tickled to pieces to have made further contact. Quietly he watched as the table was righted, his computer was restarted and broken bits of china were swept up and tossed into the bin. Fondly, he noticed how he left alone his little spelling game, fanned around his portrait. This, Jezabel was grateful for; it took the most effort, surely weeks of work to arrange those 7 letters into his name! ...alright maybe more like an hour. Out of the loop with the living as he was, Jezabel still had some certainty that the sun only set once every 24 hour period. Regardless, he glowed a little brighter, looking at his letters, his name, his last shred of identity.

)o(

"Jezabel" brought up little on the internet. Some drivel from the Urban Dictionary paired with the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia's chosen spelling for the fallen Biblical queen. The magazine 'Jezebel' was another top result, unsurprisingly, since Google kept wanting to insist that he MEANT 'Jezebel' and not 'Jezabel' because Google was a whiny know it all cock. Scattered around were a few old LiveJournals kept by young women, mostly, some in languages he didn't know.

'Jezabel Victorian' brought up some gaudy pseduo-Victorian jewelry, the sort that was just cheap brass with some beads added and fake-aged. 'Jezabel Hargreaves' was also a failed search, seeming to rule out that this was a nephew or cousin or any sort to Mr. Alexis Hargreaves. With a weary sigh and a crick in his neck, Cooper slumped down into his chair. Jezabel was, by all accounts, a name, though not a very amicable one nor, so far as he knew, a boy's name, so he was torn on his theory that the Not Scrabble tiles were meant to reveal the identity of Mr. Dandy there. Of course there was the obvious meaning of the word, meaning a whore or a loose woman but, again, this did fuck-all for his Sherlock Holmes playacting. His eyes wandered over to the shelf; from here he could not see the tiles, but he could see the portrait, Alexis and the younger man, both smart-looking and handsome. A student at the college, perhaps, a new doctor he had sponsored? That seemed in line with his philanthropic views. God, he wanted to get the print dated; judging by their clothes and the coloring of the print, referenced to his death certificate, this could be one of the last photographs of Earl Hargreaves before his death. Perhaps he ought to take it with him to see Mrs. Gabriel's family; he had high hopes for discovery there.

)o(

The Gabriel's didn't know shit and William took a heavy pour of Bailey's in his coffee that afternoon because FUCK IT. It had taken him a day and a half of phone tag and emails to finally find a single grandchild still alive, a stunningly elderly octogenarian named Florence. Still sharp as anything, friendly as all hell, weighed him down with more giant butter cookies than he could possibly eat (the remnants were in a Ziploc bag on the counter, much to Taboo's heartbreak) but she had no answers. To be sure, she had stories, which William was all too happy to soak up over tea. Florence was born in 1932, and though her grandmother had come of age more in an Edwardian backdrop than Victorian, she still lived an old fashioned and traditional upbringing after a childhood on the streets (ah, the life of a Victorian bastard was never kind was it?) but, sadly, she didn't know the man in the portrait, nor did the name Jezabel mean anything to her outside of church and Sunday school. Grandma Mary had never spoken of anyone like that, and almost never said anything of her own father, Alexis, save that he was not a kind man and that children mustn't press and fill their heads with sadness. According to grandma Mary, some men were better left forgotten to time, something that historian Cooper just couldn't abide by. Once it became clear that the house he lived in was never owned by the Hargreaves or Gabriel family as far as she knew, he wanted to thank her and take his leave, but she insisted he stay, seeming too glad to have company and someone who enjoyed such stories, and so he did, indulging them both. Emails were exchanged with her son and she promised to send along anything if she found any photographs or papers or the like. A kiss to her weathered hand made her blush, and he left, hearing her whisper excitedly about dashing foreigners and that her son MUST write to him-!

The liquor and caffeine swilled into a completely delightful potion, calming his nerves, a balm to his disappointment, but also clearing his head and filling it with space for a renewed vigor.

"We have a /motherfucking ghost/, Tabby," he sighed to his dog, his voice a mix of disbelieving horror and wide-eyed fancy. She just wagged her tail, spun in a circle at being talked to and ran into the kitchen to grab a victory bite of food from her bowl. Jezabel smirked after her. No shit, he thought she might be thinking, recalling the game of tug-o-war they had played early that morning with one of her rope toys. She had won with ease, of course, because she was a great mighty wolf-beast and he a lowly collection of dark matter and unicorn spit. 

William took another sip and pressed on, "A ghost...a fucking ghost. She...he could be sitting right on my lap and I wouldn't even know it!"

"I have MANNERS, Mr. Cooper," Jezabel scoffed, his narrow nose pointed skywards as he glowered down at Mr. Cooper with contempt. "I've seen how people behave in those programs you watch, so much drama and so many people slutting about and killing people to cover up their slutting about; the latter I can understand, but not the former, honestly!"

"I mean, God...Tabby I don't believe in ghosts-"

S"strange thing, that-"

"And now ones living in my house-"

"MY house-"

"And I don't know who he is or what he is or what to do...I'm fucking scared..."

Whether it was the alcohol, the fourth cup of coffee, the sugar high crashing down as his body processed the bakers dozen worth of cookies or just the immense weight of his upturned world finally beginning to crush him, William Cooper began to crack. With a gusting, forceful sigh, he lowered his coffee to the table in front of him and his head followed just behind it, landing on the plastic with a thump. Taboo instantly trotted over, nudging her head onto his lap, but Jezabel held back, his violet eyes wide as Mr. Cooper began to cry.

"Fucking hell Tabby I'm almost 40 fucking years old, I shouldn't believe in boogeymen!" his voice quivered, and his beloved companion just licked at his forearm. "I have a fucking poltergeist or something and its REAL and I KNOW I'm not crazy, ok?! There's no damned way anyone is getting in and I live alone and I've SEEN SHIT, real shit...God I just want to go home."

Home? What the fuck did he mean by home?! America?? No, no that wouldn't do, Jezabel thought, suddenly finding himself across the table from Cooper, crouching down in front of him to be on eye level. Or he could be, if his eyes weren't buried in his other arm, wetting them with tired tears. THIS was Mr. Coopers home, Jezabel felt like screaming at him, what was this nonsense about wanting to leave?? He hears a bump in the night and wants to go screaming back to the states? Coward! Bloody fucking coward, he accused, reaching up to twist hands into his own hair in agitation, pretending he could feel the cool, wavy strands with nonexistent fingers. Just who he was accusing of cowardice wasn't quite clear, though; if he had a heart it would be pounding against his breast right now. This was exactly what he'd worried about, what he'd fretted about! Damn it he knew he'd gone too far with his STUPID fit, but oh no, Jezabel just had to have a childish little tantrum and once again fuck up the NICE THING he had going!

By this point Taboo was spinning circles again, but not with delight at the sound of her name; instead she split her time around, first to Jezabel, and then to Cooper and back again, unsure of who most needed her comforting licks. Finally she seemed to dog-logic that she can' lick Jezabel at all, so she nuzzled at Coopers side as he cried but saved her warm brown doe-eyes for Jezabel.

"I'm fucking haunted-"

"I'm such a FUCKUP!-"

"I just want some peace-"

"I drove him away!-"

"I can't sell a haunted house!-"

"He can't leave me alone again, I can't be alone again!"

)o(

Jezabel was lost to himself. While William snored gently in his sleeping bag, having finally cried out his stress and comfort-ate his way through a sausage pizza, Jezabel cycled. There wasn't any word for what this was, no handbook for spirits, but it was all he could think of to describe it once it was done. There was no wondering while it was happening, after all, as he was completely detached from anything that went on in the 'real world' when he was caught up in a cycle. Tonight his world was filled not with home renovation and mutly dogs and nice American men who had questionable coping skills, no, it was the sound of shattering glass and the lingering pressure of someones hand on his arm. None of it was real; Cooper wouldn't wake to more smashed cups or any windows broken out. These sounds existed in only two places; Jezabel's mind and a past long forgotten to all but himself. Easily his mind conjured up his room, a grand thing, and for the cycle he was /truly there/. The carpets cushioned his footsteps, a thick, plush thing in a honey caramel color, picking up the brown-sugar stripes of his wallpaper and the the trim on his otherwise burgundy curtains. Warmth from the fire bathed him, a pleasant tingling he would miss upon breaking the spell, but at the time, he had no idea that he hadn't felt fire in a century. It was 1897, after all, not 2017. 

Taboo trailed behind him the entire night but he was oblivious to her whining (as was Cooper, in a near coma from his carbs and crying). To one room and then another he 'walked', seeing Delilah's mansion around him, feeling Cassandra's hot breath against his cheek as he remarked about his pale beauty, as he stroked his grayed blonde hair. The smell of his cologne lingered even as he rushed away to lock himself in his room, and could be covered only by the acrid stench of formaldehyde and other chemical poisons, opened unto the air from shattered jars and cracked bottles. Perhaps his recent fit in the kitchen and the exhilaration it gave him fueled this cycle, or perhaps the stress of losing control was just irrevocably linked to Lord Gladstone in his mist and fog mind. Either way, the heavy jars were smooth and cold in his hand, their crashing orchestra as loud and real and solid as the mugs smashing into the hardwood just hours ago. Temper consumed him, fueled by fear, as his mother bore the brunt of his rage and his accusations. Her fault, her damned fault, leaving him to a monster as his plaything, a sacrificial virgin to a dangerous old god! Inside his head he screamed and raged, tore down his curtains and nearly suffocated within their heavy twice-lined velvet folds. The wallpaper was scratched by his long nails, strips of it peeling down in curly-q's and just adding to the pain in his hands. Blood joined Cassandra's reeking scene and the preservative soaking into the carpet, filling his lungs with each panting, gulping breath, each already laborious from his exertion and his tears. Jezabel was not a strong man; he slept little and ate less, running on coffee and tea and maybe a biscuit or two with each cup. Meat was forced down his throat by his father and then up again in private, leaving a bile burn not unlike what he felt now, a nausea born from terror and mourning rather than an unwanted meal. Jezabel wasn't strong, he was sickly, suffering from asthma and some disease that caused his lungs and belly to fill with fluids as a child, the remnants of which still struggled to steal his breath away now. He wasn't strong but he was stubborn and he tore apart this office for the better part of a half hour, upending furniture that weighed as much as he, before finally crashing to his knees in a puddle of blood and burning chemicals and his mothers organs, begging for the strength to die!

Williams house was silent as the tomb, filled only with his even breathin and the tapping of claws against smooth hardwood as Tabby followed a faint, peaceful shimmer from room to room.

)o(

Cycling was when he lost himself, when he spent...god, he coudln't even estimate how much time of his afterlife had been given to the phenomina, but considering he had, as far as he knew, an eternity, those missing gaps of time really didn't hurt him. In fact, he clung to his cycles and sometimes sought any trigger he could to bring them about. Despite being disconnected from 'reality' in the physical plane, he felt alive and passionate and electrified after his broke through again, with fresh memories running through his mind. Old paintings, covered by a century of grime and smoke and dirt, were cleaned during a cycle, their covers glistening to eye-jarringly bright colors once more, their original details standing out in hyperfocused clarity. Even his most traumatic moments, rewinding over and over in the theare of his mind, were welcome touchstones to a spirit who seemed to lose more of his life every day. 

This time around, it was Cassandra, his name having been buried deep and his face once obscured. Now he coudlnt remove his visage as hard as he tried, as though it were burned on the inside of his see-through eyelids. Cassandra Gladstone, his nemesis, his priest, his companion and rapist, he hoped wherever his soul was wandering, it was a far warmer climate than London in the summer. Having broken from his cycle with dawn looming out of the windows, Jezabel could no longer feel, having no body, but that didn't stop him form reaching up to massage his arm. Cassandra had a firm grip and had bruised him heavily that night, a ring around his thin arm the colors of violets and irises and, later, marigolds. If he was able to remove his spectral clothes, would he find bruises in lavender and silver and charcoal grey? He almost swore he would. Static tingled along his arm, a suggestion of touch, and he had to smile to himself slightly. Phantom pain for a phantom doctor. 

Downstairs he strode, feet not touching the stairs. He loved his house in these early morning hours. William still slept, out the windows, the neighbors across the broad street still slept, but both houses held the promise of life, evident in each roll of Cooper over the covers and the cat in the neighbors window about to whine and paw for her breakfast. Morning sun was so much more fresh than evening, and it flooded the barren rooms in swirling golden pools of light, staining everything as though he wore spectacles made of amber. It seemed almost like he could bathe in it, as deceptively physical as Cassandra's hand around his arm, and he stepped into the bright egg-yolk squares every morning. Once upon a time he would stay awake till dawn, working away at his desk and greet the sunrise with shock, as though he hadn't done the same every day that month. Now he needed no sleep, and there was no physical weariness to temper his enjoyment of the sunlight, how it washed out all the shadows behind it, how the dust swirled in each stream. As a child, sickly in bed, his mother told him fairy children rode upon the dust and soot, rides within sunbeams, and he would reach weakly towards them and swirl to air, laughing as he swore he could hear the tiny children giggle with delight. It was always so warm on his skin...

Of course there was no such thing as fairies, as far as he knew, but then again he was an undead spirit, and of course he could no longer feel the warmth kissing his skin, freckleing it with faint brown dots in the summer, but he could enjoy the look of it all the same, a cleansing, gentle fire to sweep away the pain of the night and wash the house anew. If only he could clean yesterdays mistakes away so easily...

)o(

William shoved himself up around 9:30; Tabby needed to go out and was making that very evident. Feet somehow made their way into slippers, arms into bathrobe and history professor to the back door without running into anything. He linked her collar to the chain, letting her run amok to her hearts content and, still on autopilot, returned to the kitchen to start his coffee. He always loaded the machine at night so that all he would have to do in the morning was press 'start' to have within minutes a mug of energy into which he could add a spoon of brown sugar and some milk. To the bathroom he went next, doing what one does in the AM in the bathroom, and emerged to the enticing smell of coffee, the warm aroma already perking him up a little bit. He had but one mug left after his ghosts little tirade, taking for granted that he didn't smash this little oversight as he slept, but no, there it was, safe within the ugly green cabinets. It was still in one piece; it did, however, 'clink' when he eased it off the shelf.

Tired eyed stared at the mug, which had on it only a dated 90's era print of Garfield procaliming his usual distate for the begining of the workweek, and he turned it about to look for conspicuous cracks, marks or the like, and he found nothing, though the noise continued as he turned it about. Sure that it was far too early for puzzles, he sighed and peered into the cup. Inside sat a...a thing, honestly, some small dark thing hidden in the shadows. Sure that spidrers and other creepy crawlings did not make heavy metalic clunking sounds, he tipped the mug into his palm and out tumbled what he immediately recognized as a coin.

Now, drunk cooper was known to put his keys in the crisper and his wallet in the dryer, but he was not THAT out of it last night, he barely qualified as tipsy! Besides that, this wasn't his coin, this wasn't anything he'd be carrying in his pocket or a change jar, not anything English, European nor American, at least not at first glance. Pulling it closer and wandering to find his glasses, he held the tarnished little coin up in the golden morning light and, squinting, barely made out a very faded date.

1897.

)o(

Jezabel didn't exactly have parents who prepared him for a competent adult life, but there was one lesson they had both imparted on him, though in glaringly different ways; when you are at fault, express your remorse and apologies. His father often demanded a blood atonement and his mother, words and a perhaps an abnegation of dessert. Living to the age of 27 he also knew that a wonderful way to express ones apologies was a gift.


	12. Trans-Dimensional Collect Call

Jezabel glowed the entire day through at Mr. Coopers acceptance of his gift. With a tired and bewildered look to his eyes, William had smiled faintly and walked immediately to his nest in the dining room, digging out a locked iron box hidden under a floorboard and pressed the coin in among a birth certificate, a passport and other bits of paperwork. Obviously this coin was something he wanted to keep safe, and seeing a part of Cooper so much like himself had filled Jezabel with a lightness he could barely remember feeling. He, too, kept his most treasured possessions down beneath the floors, where he had taken that very coin. It was his favorite among many, for though it wasn't the largest or shiniest, neither older nor newest, it was very important. Four little numbers tied Jezabel to this world, both within his memories and within this pseudo-physical sense. They reminded him when it was he had left the 'now' and become a part of forever. Truly, Mr. Cooper might have been just as thrilled with any of them, since he seemed to fancy old things so much, and he needn't have parted with something he himself so deeply valued, but it was paramount that Mr. Cooper stay here, and he hoped that somehow the little metal medallion could convey what Jezabel could not. Loneliness was just as painful after death as before, and he NEEDED Mr. Cooper to stay. Ghosts were real, so it didn't seem too much of a stretch to think that maybe this little chunk of matter could be haunted with emotions and intent as much as the house was haunted with him.

As William replaced the box and went about his day, Jezabel saw no signs of moving plans, and he would know if there were any; he scarcely left William alone. When he fried up eggs and rashers of bacon for his breakfast, Jezabel was right at the stove-or, nearly, right IN the stove because the little flames that welled up from the gas jets were just too enticing to ignore, and he swam his hands within the flickering light as though they were sprinkles of rainwater. A lit computer screen was read by them both, Jezabel catching up on news about people he didn't know in a world not his own. With interest though, he did note that he was fairly sure Elizabeth II had been queen the last time there were tenants here, which if nothing else proved the tenacity of the British crown. When Mr. Cooper cleaned, Jezabel watched from the corners, dancing just out of reach of the broom and mop and other much noisier appliances. Roaring and squelching and making a generally unholy racket, Jezabel didn't like the "steamer" any more than Taboo did, but at least SHE could go outside away from the beast! Finally disgusted with the sound, he'd unplugged it from the socket, twice. The first time, Mr. Cooper had nonchalantly just popped it back in; the second, he'd looked around with hesitation before winding the cord loosely around his hand. For a moment, Jezabel had held his nonexistent breath, fearful that he'd already crossed a line he'd just tried so hard to erase, but Cooper had just put a lopsided 'fuck can i do?' smirk to his face and spoke to the air around him

"Ok...Ok, enough for now, then? I'll put it away for now...but I need to finish it tomorrow, alright?"

Jezabel glowed even brighter.

One chore after another, Lunch, snack, supper, Jezabel heard no phone calls to his mother in America, nor did he leave at any point to go buy passage on a boat across the Atlantic, and for this he was glad. Smugly he crossed his arms before his breast, long snaked of silvery hair waving around him as he watched Cooper and Tabby playing in the backyard. He had won, because of course he had, though it wouldn't do to leave it at that. One floor below, the basement held hundreds more precious, lovely trinkets.

)o(

When William found the coin in his coffee cup, he had been, in equal measure, freaked out, excited, and a little touched, honestly, and he's instantly squirreled it away into his fireproof lock box for safekeeping.

When William found the rusty bobby bin the next morning, he was all of the aforementioned, plus a bit perplexed, and had even wondered for a hot minute if this was even left by his ghost, but he did not use bobby pins in his hair nor had he anyone visit his house the previous day who used them. Yet there it was, sitting on his bathroom counter, right where it belonged. Into the lock box it went, then, wrapped in a square of toilet paper.

The following morning, it was a single earing, hoop back pearl, though he didn't know if it was a real pearl or not and he wasn't itching to stick it into his mouth to find out.

By the weeks end, his lock box was getting a bit crowded, and he made an extra stop on his grocery run that Sunday to sort through one of the antique malls, picking out a dresser-top jewelry case (Scottish, 1889, not the best condition, honestly, the lining rotten away, but it would serve well. William just needed a new place to keep his little gifts and trinkets.

Just in time, too, because his ghost left another gift every day for the rest of the week, culminating in another coin, this one from 1909. As he placed it with the other, he wondered if these were particularly valuable, but he pushed the thought away instantly. It would take an unholy sum of money for him to want to part from these little shiny baubles, which he squirreled away in the sweet cedar cubbyholes of his jewelry box.

It was on the first day of the next week that it occurred to him that perhaps it would be polite to leave a gift in return. After all, his ghost was leaving him so many personal effects (at least, they seemed to be personal. He hadn't a clue in hell where he was digging up all these baubles, but he also doubted he was able to leave the house. That's how hauntings worked, right?) so leaving something out for him seemed polite. Of course, as soon as the thought flittered into his mind, he found himself shaking his head at the impossibility of it all. Despite the apparition he'd seen, despite the room now uncovered in the attic, too frightening to approach, despite the gifts appearing out of nowhere and the tiles and the EVP, there was still a part of William's mind that clung to the impossibility of it all. Online, along with ghost hunting message boards and occult sights with flashing backgrounds from 2002, he'd come across numerous studies debunking the paranormal. Sound waves, magnetic pulses, picking up other frequencies, simple suggestion, all of these and more could lead one to believe they had seen a ghost. Just weeks ago William would have found himself among this camp, but there was too much in the way of physical evidence to compel him to try. Here, in the privacy of his home, with only his dog to judge him (and would she really?) he could contemplate gifts for a ghost, a reverse momento mori.

What to give, though, was an even more difficult question than whether to give in the first place. Despite being an avid collector, William had very few small trinkets and possessions of his own here in the house, not this early in the renovation. Such things only served to collect dust and drywall powder and smudges unless he covered them all carefully, and while this did lend itself to a nice Victorian soot-and-blacking aesthetic, William just wasn't THAT committed to the lifestyle. So many of his things were in storage at this point, as he'd finally terminated the lease on his last apartment. Rifling through a locker wasn't very appealing, not nearly as appealing as rifling through another antique shop. He would never say no to that.

This was how William came home one afternoon after supper, with leftovers in one hand and a brown paper shopping bag in the other. Unsure of how to go about this and feeling rather like a cultist lying out an offering, William laid next to the tiles a comb, the decorate sore women used to help sweep up their long hair. It was metal and enamel, the decoration chipped badly but showing an off white and lilac cluster of flowers. They might have been fashioned after something real with a name, but Will didn't know for sure. But it was pretty, with a piece of cut glass in the center of each flower. Considering the portrait showed a man with such a long ponytail, and how many wisps of silver-blonde hair seemed to swim about the apparition...perhaps it was tongue-in-cheek, since he couldn't actually USE it, but the notion seemed acceptable anyway.

He and taboo went to bed, where he slept completely through the night and upon waking, he went straight to the shelf. The comb was gone, a wine cork left in its place.

)o(

Jezabel was absolutely delighted. It was such a pretty thing, the enamel smooth and glistening in swirled marble tones of ivory and cream and white, and so many shades of violet and lavender. Sure, it was a bit worn, obviously the woman who owned it hadn't taken the best care of it, but that didn't matter since it was his now, his, bought just for him, and he was /delighted/.

"Mr. Cooper has very nice taste," he said to Taboo, not for the first time since his watching of the foreigner began. "It's quite pretty." And since he couldn't work it into his own hair, he knelt down, lacing the dull points into the thick fur along her neck. She mouthed at him, having no interest in looking pretty, and he laughed as he replaced the ornament with his hand instead, his fingertips just barely ruffling a bit of fur like a soft spring breeze. He promised her a good game of fetch down the long upstairs hall, but first he needed to put away his new little treasure. Down he went, having to take the mortal way down the stairs since he carried with him something physical. Careful, having to concentrate so hard to not drop it through his barely tangible fingers, he laid it on a small, crumbling brick, a cast off from the last foundation repair, just beside his coin collection. Here, the sunlight would stream in just right for a few minutes a day, shining on the gloss and showing how well it would gleam. Still smiling, he selected his response. Sure, such a lovely gift should have something just as lovely in return, but the cork was light and he had to ration his strength if he was to keep his promise to Taboo.

Jezabel couldn't stop smiling the entire night. A good portion of this was attributed to his playtime with Taboo, watching her flounce about wildly for the balled-up sock, often being pummeled in the face with it as Jezabel's ghost-hands were none too coordinated, but there was more to it. Had...had he been so prone to giddiness when alive? Sunshine filled his memories at times, warm, sweet-smelling grass, the summer air ruffing his skirts...he must have been small. As an adult he'd worn a dress only at Cassandra's coercion, and never outside in the fields. As a child then, he thought, he had been happy, and perhaps for brief flashes as he grew older, but he knew his later years were marked with bitterness, anger, pain and fear, not broad smiles and excited laughter. Mr. Coopers gift was just...such a small but humbly appreciated gesture. He was sure Alexis had brought him gifts before, but he couldn't remember what any of them were, not so long ago. Expensive things with no real value. Pristine and perfect but cold, something to placate him and guilt him into believing his father cared. But Mr. Cooper had nothing to gain from bribery; it was Jezabel alone who benefited from this olive branch. He wasn't frightened, not enough to leave. Not yet at least.

)o(

For days William vacillated between whether or not he should share this most recent development with Ezra. On the one hand, Ezra was a firm believer in the paranormal already, and this would just delight him to no end. Also, it would be nice to have some confirmation that he was not, in fact, batshit insane. On the other, something about this just felt far more personal than his EVP's or tiles. Gifts were still appearing throughout the house on an almost daily occurrence now; in slippers, on his laptop, the top of the stairs. Every few days he returned the favor, and so far, all his offerings had disappeared, whisked away to wherever ghosts did their banking, it seemed. Such an interaction seemed to William to push the boundaries of what could be shared. So when he invited Ezra for pizza, drinks and occult rituals that following Saturday, he kept this detail to himself. This still left plenty for them to natter about in terms of otherwordly house guests.

"And you found them like this? Just like this?" he asked incredulously upon seeing the tiles, which had now been sitting long enough in the mid-flip house to be collecting the finest veil of dust.

"Whaddya think, Ezra, I'm lying to you? Yes, I didn't move them a single centimeter since I came home and found them. Seems wrong to disturb them."

Ezra nodded his agreement, not touching the tiles at all, not daring to breathe too hard lest he rattle the light plastic bits.

"That's just amazing...honestly fucking amazing. This is some of the best fucking evidence I've ever heard of...don't tell anyone."

William cocked his head, raising one eyebrow. "And here I thought you'd be all over me getting this out to that Ghost Adventures guy."

"Fuck no. The better the evidence is the less people believe it," Ezra explained, finally tearing himself away from the shelf to head towards the kitchen and start helping himself to pizza. "And those that do, they'll be hounding you. You think neighborhood kids give you grief, imagine what a popular YouTube video could bring."

Honestly William had no plans on exposing his private life to any sort of media in the first place, for exactly those reasons. The last thing he wanted was a forum of skeptics or ghost enthusiasts shredding apart his photos, his EVP's, his private life. If nothing else he was sure it would end his teaching career. He was young enough to have come of age with the rise of the internet, but blessedly, old enough to be grown and wise before he could have made any of the social media mistakes the ruin the lives of teens and young adults. No, this was between him, Ezra, and his spirit. 

Haunted talk wafted away for a while, as they caught up on work gossip, compared notes on just which student it was who started a 6-man fistfight in the student union the previous week and did another check on just how many weeks were left to go before the 82 year old asshole of a French teacher would retire. They ate in the kitchen, sitting up on counters since his card table was too small and rickety for two, and the rain outside was blowing onto the porch. It was cozy, though, with the dark gray skies outside making the bulbs in the kitchen seem even brighter, a cool breeze wafting in from one cracked-open window. As he took anther swig f his beer, he wondered where his ghost was, whether he enjoyed the company in the house, and just when he had become so...hesitantly comfortable with his haunting. There were still hours in the dead of night where his neck prickled and he became aware of just how large his house was, and how frightening it could be to not know what lurked in each empty room and dusty alcove. Never knowing if a chill was just a sign he needed a sweater or if his ghost was following too closely...he seemed to mean no harm, but that didn't mean William didn't have moments of "oh my God i'm haunted."

Perhaps this was why his attitude towards Ezra's spirit board was far better this time around. most- not all, but most- of his disbelieve was long gone by now, and the idea of getting to know what floated in the shadows of his home was a comfort. People fear what they do not understand, isn't that how the old adage went? Besides, if Mrs. Gabriel's granddaughter couldn't answer hi questions and the internet and public libraries provided little information, then maybe a little otherworldly face time was in order. 

"Bust it out," was all he said over the lip of his beer bottle.

And Ezra did, in true Ezra fashion, with candles and a sprinkling of salt around them. Such a down to earth guy in some aspects, a logical mathematician, but God damn did he believe in every aspect of these superstitions. But considering it was William who had a pen pal beyond the veil, he wasn't going ot judge. He just finished his beer, grabbed a cushion and sat cross legged across form Ezra as he set up the planchet.

They began with the usual banter, thanking the ghost for welcoming them, asking his indulgence. Asking if he was with them, if he could hear them. It was a total reversal of how William felt the last time. Only a bite of skepticism colored his emotions as he sat quietly, the tips of his fingers on the wood and plastic planchet. He waited with anticipation this time, rather than groaning inside and waiting for this humiliation to be through.

Despite this, there was no immediate response. If his ghost was nearby, he wasn't ready to chat. Silence hung between each of Ezra's questions, his voice tapering off to be swallowed by silence, absorbing the noise in dust motes and shadows. William could almost envision the quiet hanging over them like cobwebs, impossibly delicate and strong at the same time. It would take nothing to break it, only a rustle, a clearing of his throat, but he didn't dare.

Ezra did though, over and over. "Can you speak with us? ... We'd like to get to know you, and learn about you and your house...was this your house?"

A drip from the kitchen faucet into a glass rang across the first floor. Down the street someones garage door opened, letting someone out for a Saturday night in the city, perhaps. But nothing from the spirit.

)o(

Jezabel had never used a spirit board when he was alive. Tarot was his thing, hypnosis as well, but that was more of a semi-psychology than magic. He could lay out a spread by the time he was 16 and read a fortune quite well, though what it was speaking to him through the cards, he ha never asked. Usually he chalked any accuracies up to coincidence, or the projections one put upon the cards, reading what they wanted, filling in vague gaps with relevant information. On the occasion he couldn't account for something, he lumped it into the same category as the dolls, as Cassandras mind reading, of the God peering down on them all; he couldn't explain it, and it gave no solace to think about it. Distract, move on. Now, though, he was on the other side of this conversation. He was the otherworldly gazing upon the mortals, who themselves surely had their own ideas about what would move a pointer, a pendulum, a perfect card. 

The chance to mess with them was too good to pass up, and once more Jezabel wondered if he had been this playful as a human, as a mortal...

His desires and his abilities, though, did not seem to line up as he wished. For the first several questions, Jezabel struggled to even get his fingers to 'touch' the planchet. They kept slipping right through, as though he were made of smoke. Which, he might be, who knew? Again he struggled, growing frustrated. He knew how to concentrate, he knew how to draw his energy up to make himself a semi-solid...thing...but it didn't always work. Sometimes ones efforts could be top notch and still not succeed, a lesson Jezabel learned through pain over both his lives.

"If you have anything to say to us, you can say it here."

He was fucking TRYING damn it. He closed his eyes, mimed the taking of breath and tried once more, and to the delight of one and childish screams of two, he managed to knock the planchet forward several inches.

"You did that!" William accused of Ezra, who just swore in Russian, sounding as though he was turning to assault back on William. They both gave a nervous laughter though, and neither let go of the planchet.

"Spirit? Are you here, then?" William asked, and Jezabel gave him a withering glare, pissed that he couldn't see it. He just moved the pointer, didn't he?!

Another lurch, the smooth nibs gliding over the new board. This time both men were silent, giving all their attention to the board. Attention meant energy, something Jezabel sorely needed to make this work. It felt like they were intentionally trying to keep the planchet in place but with much effort he finally got it to move over to 'hello'. He thought William might piss himself.

"Ok, ok, hi, hello, Spirit It's uh...nice to hear from you?" He offered lamely, and even dead Jezabel couldn't help but feel second-hand embarrassment for Mr. Cooper. He was a fucking serial killer yet he was better in social situations than this old man. Honestly.

"Will, you can't just call him Spirit, he has a name."

"I'm sure he does but I don't bloody know it!"

"It's probably Jezabel!"

"That's not a name!"

"Yes it is."

"Alright yes, a woman's name, an awful name that nobody in the 1800s would give their-"

Jezabel slid the planchet down the board with enough force to wrench it out from Ezra's fingertips, to encircle "yes" within the acrylic dome.

"...Yes, Jezabel is your name?" Cooper said quietly, looking off around him, glancing right past Jezabel.

Ezra barely had enough time to touch his hands back to his corner before it jerked away and then back towards "yes".

"...Oh...what a lovely name," William croaked, trying to cover up his earlier faux pas, obviously starting to sweat a little. Jezabel smirked, satisfied at the reaction before remembering, wait. He was trying to NOT scare his new friend away. Damn it. 

"Do you uh...Do you have a last name, then?" He asked, his eyes still flickering from around the room down to the planchet.

...Did he? Last name, last name...he wasn't a Hargeaves, that much he remembered, but what WAS his name, then, his mothers name?

For lack of an answer, he did nothing, not wanting to waste the energy to move the piece over to no. When they realized they would get no answer, they hurriedly tried for another, not wanting to lose their perceived momentum.

"Alright, ok...Jezabel? Jezabel, how old are you...were you...uh..."

"Can you tell us when you were born, or when you died?" Ezra jumped in, trying to make William's stuttering more palatable.

This one was harder. He didn't remember when he was born...he believed he was in his twenties, or maybe thirty? But he remembered when he died. For now, at least, until he forgot the little numbers etched onto that coin.

"1-8-9-7."

"Holy shit...and you swear you aren't doing this, Will?"

"Ask me again and i"ll move it straight up your ass, Ezra." Cooper threatened with grit teeth. Jezabel thoroughly enjoyed watching these two sometimes, it was better than a vaudeville act. 

"Ok, ok, yeesh...Jezabel, if that's you in the picture, did you know Mr. Hargreaves?"

It took everything Jezabel had to not slam the planchet into the air with his mood shift. The fuck kind of question was that to just go into?! 

Instead he kept his composure and, after a moment, slid the piece slowly back to "yes", but he refused to answer their question as to how he knew him, not even when they asked if they were related.

"Change the subject," William suggested. "He doesn't seem to want to talk about that."

"Ok then, to what? The weather? Your dog? If there are taxes in the after-"

T-A-B-B-Y

"Holy shit Will."

Anxiety flickered across Williams face, and he immediately looked over at Tabby, sleeping in her basket, one paw kicking about, and immediately Jezabel could sense his fear. Oh, of course,e having a spirit board spell out the name of a loved one couldn't be the most comforting situation! Quickly, he gathered himself together again and spelled out, "like."

"Oh...oh, you like Tabby?"

"Yes."

The relief spread from his smile down to his entire body, and Jezabel watched his shoulders slump forward. 

"Yes, I like her too, Jezabel, she's good company don't you think?"

Another twitch off and on the 'yes' design. Actually this was sort of fun. It had been...God, far too long since he'd been able to speak in any form at all. Screaming in the night and terrifying the tenets didn't count. Sure these were all mundane time filler questions on the surface, but both parties were thrilled beyond measure. By this time, though, Jezabel's energy was starting to waver in and out again, and within a couple more questions, rather than an answer, he just slid the planchet over to 'Goodbye.'

"Well that was r- abrupt," Ezra said, and Jezabel knew what he was about to say, and savored the wide-eyed moment of panic as he caught himself. Having once lorded over death and the fear it brought, he was glad to see he could still wield such influence now that he had joined his victims in the grave.

)o(

Once it became evident that their guest- Jezabel- was no longer in a talkative mood, they boxed up the board, tried to ease out of such a disoriented mindset with the last of the pizza, and around 3 am a then-sober Ezra bid his friend goodnight. Taboo jerked awake at the sound of the door opening, yawned, stretched, and padded over to tell Ezra goodnight as well. Her tongue lolled out as she got plenty of stitches and Russian pet names cooed at her, gave a final yip, and then trotted back to her food bowl in the kitchen. Just moments after, with the door latched behind, William followed, intent on breaking down the pizza and beer box to put in the recycling.

"Whaddya think, Taboo, you need out one more time before-"

Will's words stuck in his throat when he entered the brightly lit kitchen and saw Taboo receiving another round of love and cuddles, not from Ezra, but from a translucent shimmer of mist, it seemed, barely keeping the form of a slender young man. Jezabel was barely perceptible, washed out by the fluorescent bulbs, but his eyes shone a bright, pretty blue as he smiled down at Tabby, and his long hair wafted around his shoulders and his arms, reminding William of the plants that grew lazily among the bottom of a pond. He didn't dare speak, he just watched, furiously drinking in every detail he cold before Jezabel could disappear again. His long hair, a thin face, a long pleated gown, fading more the further towards the floor it reached. As his eyes traveled down the wisps of his arms, he could see Taboo's fur barely moving beneath his touch, but she smiled and panted all the same, staring straight up at her playmate.

Despite his silence, Jezabel finally turned to look straight at him, piercing blue eyes boring at him as though William was the one completely transparent. Jezabel didn't seem startled at all though, as if he knew William was there all along, and he even offered him a faint, polite smile before fading out entirely.


	13. Hailstorm

The summer sun beat through the windows as August dawned, balmy and humid and far hotter than England had any right to be. William awoke each day in his sleeping bag bathed in sweat and swearing that today was the day he finally went and got a bedframe and mattress...but day after day, he'd bathe, have an iced coffee, get to work, and make a dozen excuses to avoid that chore. The bedrooms weren't done (legit) and he wanted to get a nice antique bedframe to bring his own mattress in on (also legit). Besides, each night as he settled in to sleep, with the windows open letting in the sweet night air, the cool cross breeze blowing over his face, ruffling Taboo's fur, he was at a loss to recall the sweltering way in which he woke. In fact, he had a vague sense of being quite chilled in the middle of the night, more than once having to wrestle his way out of his sleeping bag to shut the nearest windows. Odd, though, considering it only dipped down to about 55 Fahrenheit.

)o(

Mr. Cooper was a very peaceful sleeper. Though he sometimes didn't crawl into bed till 2 or 3 am, he seemed to have no trouble actually getting to sleep, nor staying asleep, which was beneficial to Jezabel. It wouldn't due at all for him to wake up in the middle of the night to find an otherworldly effigy staring him down. The part of Jezabel that still identified as a human being reminded him that watching people sleep was not very good etiquette, and trying to crawl into bed with them without explicit consent or invitation crossed the line from rude to vulgar, and possibly illegal, but he couldn't help it. Once William shut everything down for the night, there was no more hot coffee to leech from, no warm laptop battery, no running water. Sure, the electric ice box ran non stop, and his phone was often plugged in overnight, but he had grown weary of Cooper wondering why it was still only at 75% come morning or why said ice box wasn't seeming to keep things as cool as they should be. Surely this was the better option, then, and Jezabel prided himself on a decision well-made. He needed this, damn it, this warmth, this energy that William gave off, so cozy in his little bundle of blankets. Jezabel was careful; he would never take enough to leave Mr. Cooper lethargic or drained when he woke, and Jezabel didn't NEED that much, just enough, just a few brushes of his hand 'through' Mr. Cooper's mussed hair, across his cheek, make-believing he could feel the stubble peppering his skin. Some nights, if he was particularly daring, Jezabel would lower himself down towards Mr. Coopers chest, where the lungs dwelled and the heart beat. Each thump drove blood through his body, hot from the liver and other innards. In life, Jezabel had cut open many men's chests to feel their freshly-stilled hearts, both silken and firm beneath his fingers, and reveled in the thrill it gave him, a burst of life. Now, he didn't need a bone saw or rib splitter to get to this most precious center of life; he could reach right into his chest if he wished, feel the heat and energy at its source. he'd done it before, to past tenants, but the result to the living was usually a panic attack, an all consuming feeling of dread, leaving them clutching their chests as though in pain.

Jezabel was too fond of Mr. Cooper to send him into such a tizzy. He would trail over his skin, watch the goosebumps rise on his arms and the back of his neck, watch him shiver a bit, but he wouldn't sink his hands into the blood or flesh or bone. As he eased himself down night after night to lie beside him, he wondered when it was in death that he developed the ability to give a shit about another person. He supposed loneliness could do strange things to someone. True loneliness was far more powerful than anything he'd ever felt in life. Years, decades spent alone, the few people he saw running from him in unbridled terror, not unlike how his colleagues spurned him, shunned him or grabbed at him like an object. So long on his own, unable to speak or know another, yet here was a man who left him gifts, accepted his own, and didn't go screaming from the house at the very sight of him.

Someone once told him he was a monster, and someone else saw through that and told him it wasn't so. Now, he truly was one, yet here was another who seemed to not care. Yes, Mr. Cooper was something special, and he savored those hours lying side by side, tracing his cheeks, his lips, the bridge of his nose, always reluctant when he had to pull away at dawn.

)o(

William's mornings, despite being sweat-soaked, were becoming comfortingly routine. He was getting on to some of his favorite parts of a flip, and that was redoing the decor. Now, this did involve more than putting on a fresh coat of paint, of course. Hardwood floors needed sanding and re-varnishing, layers of wallpaper needed to be stripped, molding taken down, new put up, cut himself. This could take the better part of a year, but he loved every part of it, recreating a modern version of the Victorian home. Alongside his penchant for interior design, he was fond of landscaping. His expertise was more in line with middle class row houses, without large lards to keep, but these upper middle class detached homes were still a joy to work on. So when an August morning dawned overcast and comparatively cool, he was glad for the fresh air and a chance to work outside, Taboo following right behind. She was minding enough now to be off-lead while he was out with her, and she was just beside herself with all the activity going on.

"It's a weed, you dumb-ass, like the ones growing between your ears," he sighed at her as she yipped. William was on his hands and knees in what was once a brick-lined flowerbed, wrenching tendrils of green things from the stubborn ground to hurl behind him. Taboo seemed to think this was fetch, and kept getting smacked in the face by soil-coated roots. She'd huff and yip indignantly with each hit, but it didn't stop her pursuit one bit. Instead she seemed to take it as a personal challenge, and she was determined to catch at least ONE!

"You're lucky you're a pretty girl, Tabby, cause smart you are not," he laughed, wiping his brown of dirt and sweat as he stood to collect his pulled weeds into a wheelbarrow. Though he had made good progress, there was so much land to still go, and not just near the house; he owned over an acre of property, a large chunk of which was a dense wooded area towards the back of the long, narrow property. The inner 9 year old in him loved it, and could just see a little table and chairs set out there after some of it was cleared out, having afternoon tea in the dappled sunshine as he graded essays or worked on his next historical journal. Just envisioning the autumn leaves falling around him as Taboo hunted around the micro-woods pushed him further in the direction of making this his forever-home.

Well. That and other reasons.

After a quick lunch of cereal, which may or may not be marketed towards aforementioned inner 9 year old, he emptied his wheelbarrow and went back to work, pushing his way into the tangled, gnarled pseudo-woods to see what he had going for him here. Scores of trees, their branches all tangled into a single canopy, provided ample shade, even on this overcast afternoon, and cooled his work-heated skin even more. This was advantageous, considering the ground was just as densely covered, perhaps even more so, if he also counted all the garbage that had managed to accumulate back here. McDonald cups and grocery store bags and empty bottles of water and soda pop and beer all layered up with dead leaves and branches like natures most unappetizing parfait. In some areas the debris came clear up to his knees, which he found out the hard way as he sunk that far into the mess, brambles and shards of plastic tugging frantically on his jeans.

Well. William knew what HIS job was that day. Armed with his thick leather gloves and 2 different pairs of garden sheers, he started from the front and worked his way back, his blades and hands gobbling up great chunks of dead sticks and weeds and faded fast-food labels. Screw the wheelbarrow, he could use a good old fashioned dumpster right about now. As it was, he was going to have to call for a truck to clear out most of his organic garbage this week. Times like this he wished he owned a pick-up still. 

Though arduous, the labor wasn't entirely unpleasant. As each layer was pealed back one by one, it eventually revealed the fresh, rich, dark soil beneath, teeming with worms and other little critters. Just the smell alone made the work worth it, upturned soil filling his nose and making him look even more forward to making something nice of this wilderness, or leaving most of it to just do as it wished, within reason.

Some areas were harder than others to clear out though; there was an entire felled log just a few steps in that he had to just step around; he didn't have the means to move it, and Lord knew what animals had made a home out of the log anyway. He didn't want to disturb anything larger than a cricket out here; just because he was up on his rabies shots didn't mean he wanted to put them to good use. So he let it be, as well as some of the larger stones scattered around back here, one of which he nearly face planted over. 

"That's just what I need eh, Tabby? To smash my teeth out on a boulder or a- the fuck are cinder blocks doing back here," William sighed as he recognized the hollow corners of the brick. Must be the remnants of someones building project a few decades back. Though caked with mud and moss, they were easier to move, and he carried them eat to the edge of his forest as he encountered them, till he got to one that just wouldn't budge. Sighing, he planted his feet as firmly as he could in the soft decay, and tried to pry it up from the clutches of nature. Again it refused to give, and he would have left it at 'fuck it' and made it a future him problem, had he not noticed the unusual pattern of moss growing across the front. The perfect little circle of green was not what he expected from randomized nature nor from industrial angles. With piqued curiosity, William bent down, his gloves digging down into the earth and pried away some clinging flora and muck, revealing a continuing pattern of circles and scrolls. They were faint and worn down from the weather and from rot, but the markings in the stone were obviously very ornate. A garden bench, he thought with rising anticipation as he dug out more of the stone. Finally he freed it, or at last, a part of it; the jagged edge showed quite obviously that whatever garden decor this was, it had long broken. Well then, back into the green abyss. This time he was nearly up to his elbows in the wet muck, and exhumed another chunk of stained rock, plopped it aside with the larger, and dove once more. Soil sank into his glove, wetting his skin, but he was find with that, since he was already head-to-toe filthy. Fingers finally brushed another solid piece, too hard and too dense to be a root, and triumphantly he exhumed it, expecting another piece of gray garden stone or cement bench. He certainly wasn't expecting to hold in his hand something that looks startlingly like a human pelvis.

)o(

Once William had succeeded in not pissing himself nor screaming like a small child seeing a spider on the wall, he scurried back into the house as fast as his mud-caked boots could carry him, grabbing Tabby as he went. Not giving a shit about the muck he drug into his house, he slammed the door behind him, snatched his phone off the charger (WHY did it never charge all the way?!) and immediately Googled the number for his local police department. Thus was how he found himself pacing his kitchen, struggling to understand the thick accent of the officer. 

"No no, I've only owned the property about 5 months now, moved in 2 months ago maybe? ...Yes, it's definitely on my property...Well I'm not a doctor, sir, I'm a historian, I'm just saying it LOOKS like a human pelvis, I'm not saying it definitely IS one...Can you say that again slower please?"

It took him the better part of a half hour to get himself and the officer on the same page, and nearly as long for a police car to pull up in his driveway, 2 uniformed men getting out and approaching his porch. William couldn't get out to meet them fast enough, and lead them immediately around to the back of his house and into the woods.

"I was just trying to do some gardening, officers, I'm flipping this house. I was digging around for stones and cinder blocks and pulled out...I pulled out...well, THAT!" With an exasperated flourish, he pointed to the yellowed, discolored bone, lying stark atop a bed of green wild vines. "Listen, sirs, I'm very sorry if that's, like, a dog's hip or something, but I'd rather be safe than sorry, you know?"

The older officer just nodded up and down, bouncing on the balls of his feet calmly as he listened to the yank rattle on his story, as the younger crouched down to inspect the body part in question.

"And I mean I've looked into the house's history- I'm a historian, you know, Victorian, so I've looked- and as far as I can see there was no boneyard or cemetery here...though I mean, I suppose that doesn't mean much, there were lots of churchyards moved around, you know, to make room for parks and such, fascinating really, but I mean-"

"Ted, call the station, tell'em to send pathology, and the coroner," called the younger cop, now digging in his belt for a pair of rubber gloves. "This ones human."

And this was how William Cooper ended up with a dozen men and women swarming his yard and a slot on the 6 o'clock news.

)o(

"An American British immigrant got more than he bargained for today as he did upkeep on his new London home when he accidentally unearthed human remains. The man, who wishes to remain nameless, says he was working on his back garden, which was in deep disrepair, when he dug up what he thought was a human pelvis. Upon calling local authorities they were able to confirm that it was in fact a human bone, and have since unearthed almost an entire skeleton. Officer Theodore Pike says the bones appear very old, though they aren't ready to rule out foul play. The owner of the home is not considered a person of interest."

"Yes, Ezra, I'm watching the reports, I AM the reports!"

William was done pacing his kitchen now. Done standing, even. He had planted his ass very firmly on his sleeping bag, laptop before him and a bottle of wine at his side as he replayed the clip on the local news site. "It was a fucking disaster, I'm telling you, but at least they're clearing out a lot of that forest for me."

"Glad you can look on the bright said then," Ezra chuckled over the phone.

After another gulp of wine, William continued, "Ezra, there's bloodstains in my attic, footsteps in my basement and a ghost wherever he damn well pleases. Honestly I'm surprised I've only found this one body."

"Who knows, there's probably more hiding out in the walls," Ezra teased with a dark laughter. "There's probably one lounging around right behind you, smiling all bony against the drywall, and you'll accidentally pound a hole while hanging a picture and its skull will roll out-"

"Fuck you, Finch!" he hollered, loud enough that he hoped he blew out his friends eardrum. William drained his glass, and poured another. "Just. Fuck you. It was creepy ok? And they spent like 2 hours questioning me about what I knew about it, like I could possibly put it there!"

"Do they know how old it is?" his friend wanted to know.

"No, won't for a while. All kinds of testing and shit."

"...so is it his?"

William didn't have to inquire about who Ezra was referring to.

"I...I don't know, Ez, how am I suppose to know?"

A slurping sound on the other end of the phone told William his friend was having dinner while they chatted, much the same as how he was drinking himself into a grape oblivion.

"You could. Ya know. Ask him."

"Right, lemme just get out my ouija board and ask Jezabel, Oh hey, did you happen to see a whole bunch of officers dig up the back yard today and carry away a human corpse? That wouldn't happen to be yours would it buddy?"

"...I mean, that could work, honestly."

"Fuck off Ezra."

And he hung up, took another drink, and replayed the video, too tipsy and too engrossed in the Google page up in another tab to notice Jezabel fluttering behind him.

)o(

If Jezabel still had a physical heart, it would be racing right now, just as Coopers often did during his dreams. All afternoon he had been glued to the window; and, honestly, all morning, as he watched Mr. Cooper and his dog working out in the gardens, lusting to join them in the outdoors. Jezabel had seen everything; Cooper entering the woods, carrying out stones, running full-kilt in an hour later...and he had heard the phone call. Bones, he said. he found bones, and suddenly it took all the energy Jezabel had to keep himself together. Soon the yard and the house were full and loud and busy, and he had to shrink away downstairs into his crawlspace, wincing as heavy boots trod the boards above him and gruff, unfamiliar voices shouted to one another.

Bones. His bones, his body, because who else could it be?

Jezabel had thought very little of his body over the last century. He had no need to; his body had been a vessel for pain, full of scars and breaks and sickness, and though he mourned sunshine on his skin and the ability to leave these four walls, he did not mourn too much for his physical remains. Only a few times early on did he wonder where he had been buried; he didn't know if such things were important to other ghosts, considering all the lore about souls clinging to earth till they had a proper burial, but for him personally, his body was just a part of him that had been cast off, like shed hair or trimmed fingernails. But, Cassian had to have done SOMETHING with his remains, afterall, hidden him somewhere, and he supposed the back woods on this property was as good a place as any.

It took hours for Jezabel to finally emerge from his safe place in the wall, upstairs into the brightly lit kitchen and dining room. Taboo wagged her tail happily, and he afforded her a quick 'pet' but was far too focused on the news program Mr. Cooper was watching and, most importantly, to the clip they kept playing over and over. Police officers in gloves and masks, bright yellow tape surrounding the woods, cameras going off, and a growing collection of mottled, stained bones laid out to be photographed, not the least of which was a hollow-eyed, jawless skull.

How many times had Jezabel stared into the eyes of the human dead? Both the fresh corpse with its blank eyes glassing over and the clean, bleached skull, he had studied both, rendered men into both, and honestly one body, one skull looked as much like the next. Of course there were subtle differences, small planes and angles and teeth going different ways, but all in all, men were the same on the inside. Some with more fat, some with blackened lungs or cysts, some with twisted bones, but more or less the same. He had just never considered how much like the rest HE would look. Jezabel had always placed himself high above other men. Just as wicked, just as sinful, but he was still somehow different, better, more educated and enlightened, a man who understood and embraced his sin, just as he'd been taught. How, then, could his bones be just as plain as another mans? Placed side by side with a dozen others, Jezabel knew he'd have no hope of pointing out which skull his entire being had resided within for twenty-odd years, and such a thought shook him entirely.

What they did with the bones, he did not know. He'd watched them carry them away in a body bag, his earthly remains piecemeal and tumbling around, carted off to some school to be studied or something, he didn't know! And suddenly, for the first time in 100 years, he CARED! That was HIM damn it, that was a human, a person! Just because he never gave a shit about proper corpse disposal didn't mean he wasn't aware he was the odd man out there! Shouldn't they let the dead rest? Even those exhumed form churchyards long filled were usually reburied in mass graves, or left undisturbed and build atop of!

Jezabel couldn't stand to see Mr. Cooper play that clip a single more time. Ignoring Taboo this time around, Jezabel swept himself from the room, knowing the breeze he left in his wake would be barely noticed by a rather inebriated William as he hurried to the living room.

)o(

William, having downed most of a bottle of wine, nearly bolted out of his skin when 3 loud pounding thuds echoed from the living room. His first instinct, as a man still rooted in logic, was that taboo had gotten into something, knocked a candle off a table or something, but his canine companion was sleeping lazily at his side. This also ruled out instinct number 2, that someone mortal was fucking around in his house, leaving only option number 3; Taboo never barked at their ghost. In fact she seemed to fancy him.

"...Jezabel?" he called, setting aside his wine glass and laptop. 3 more solid thumps answered him and, weaving only slightly, William got to his feet and followed the noises.

"Jezabel?" he called again cautiously, slowly growing use to addressing a disembodied spirit being by name, as though it could reply. He. As though he could reply, which he often did. Not now, though, at least not verbally. Trying to blink the liquor from his eyes, William looked around, to see just what it was Casper decided to knock around to get his attention. Flicking on the light, he found nothing broken, nothing out of place, turned over on their shelf or on the floor, and considering how sparsely furnished this room still, was it didn't take long to finish his cursory sweep. In fact he was nearly about to chalk it up to alcohol induced hallucinations when he noticed something amiss over the shelf, where Jezabel's portrait stood, along with the tiles, the ones that had, until now, spelled out his name. They had changed, surely by the ghosts own hand, and spelled out,

'Mine'

"...I thought so, Jezabel," William murmured after a long pause, half drunkenness and half awkward pain for his roommate. "I thought that must have been you...I'm sorry, you didn't, um...you didn't see that news article, did you? The video?" The image of that dirt-caked skull was burned into his own mind; he couldn't imagine what it must be for the previous owner of said skull. 

Another thump seemed to shake the room, and William looked around wildly for the source, but again, found none. The only thing amiss was the tiles, which had all bounced and shifted slightly, as though someones fist had pounded heavily right next to them.

'Mine!' Jezabel seemed to be saying, and William held his hands out soothingly.

"It's yours, Jezabel, I know, I understand. They...they think you were murdered. Recently, I mean, they're just...they're gonna see how uh...how old you are?" he offered nervously, shoving his glasses up his sweaty nose. He waited another angry round of thumping, but none came.

He pressed on. 

"I'm sorry, Jezabel, if you're upset about me disturbing you...or them taking you-"

/BANG/

'Mine!'

William winced, but not with fear; with pain for Jezabel. Each noise seemed to grow more desperate, more urgent.

"I'm sorry," he said again, imploring Jezabel to understand; the alcohol in his system seemed to be fading fast. "I...Jezabel, I don't know what they'll let me do, alright, when they're done? But if I can, I'll make sure that...that you're put to rest, ok? You deserve that-"

William expected another round of Jezabel's fist on the shelf or more pounding; what he hasn't been expecting though was the not-Scrabble box to go flipping into the air as though it were on the lower end of a teeter totter and someone just dropped a safe on the upper end. The open game flung itself into the air, scattering the board, the plastic trays and dozens of tiny letters. Letting out a totally dignified shriek, William threw his arms up around him as the alphabet rained down upon him like a very ineffective hail storm. Tiles landing all over his shoulders, his hair, down his shirt, they clattered along the floor and, by the sound of them, that was not their final destination. It took far longer for the game to settle down than gritty would usually allow, and he was sure he heard tiles popping off windows in the next room, tipping against the ceiling fan and even falling into the vents.

Finally he thought it safe to pry open his eyes, several seconds after the last of the noise had died down, and he hoped his glasses would be enough to protect him from any rogue vowels; Vana White hadn't prepared him for this.

"...You ok Jezabel?" he asked cautiously, and there was no reply. He looked around at the mess, at all the beige little squares peppering the room, seemingly random, until he reached the shelf. Once more, the letters had changed themselves, now reading,

"my home"

"...Yes, this is your home, Jezabel," he assured his spirit, looking over his shoulder as though seeking him out. "This is your home, even if your...your body isn't here, ok?" Quickly he snapped his eyes closed so hard his whole face wrinkled, afraid of more lingual assaults, but none came.

"Do you understand, Jezabel? You belong here, this is your home, ok? And this doesn't change that. this is YOUR home!"

Silence.

"Ok, Jezabel, I'm gonna...I'm gonna go have a bath, ok? Gonna have a bath...I'm gonna leave the tiles out for you, ok? Since you seem to like them so much...You can use them all you like, ok?...Ok, Jezabel?"

Longing for an answer, he waited several minutes before finally slinking off to sink into the tub for an hour, a podcast playing on his phone (which barely had the juice to finish the whole episode.) When he emerged with washed hair and a clean pair of pajama pants, the game was, for the most part, exactly where he had left it, save for 2 little things. On the floor near his sleeping bag, arranged a little more scattered than the previous notes, was the message,

'our home.'

And a little further along, tucked alongside his pillow where Jezabel surely knew William couldn't miss it, he had spelled out a demands for,

'more tiles.'


	14. Chapter 14

William's home grew unusually still and quiet in the coming days. In past houses this was not only expected, but welcome, a reprieve from London city or his noisy classrooms. Living alone he had become accustom to the daily companionship of a CD player and some videos playing in the background, until such time as he invited someone to his home on his own will and accord. This house, however, was different from the rest, and not just from the addition of a dog who liked barking at flies. Jezabel was seldom so absent for such a long period. 

Perhaps this was not a fair assessment. William had lived in this house only about 3 months, give or take, and had spent only a few weeks with the knowledge that he bunked alongside a very real and very sentient disembodied soul. To pretend he knew Jezabel's patterns, what was or was nor normal, was very presumptuous. How could he claim to know what his habits were, when he didn't even know the rules for what he was? This was how William calmed himself on the fourth morning with no gifts laid out for him. To be sure, Jezabel was still around; he was felt as easily as warm sunshine or a chilly breeze biting through a coat. He was the ruffling of William's hair as he lie still on his sleeping bag with the new episode of Scandal, he was the happy yips Taboo sent out, staring at blank walls and, he was growing sure, the coffee cups that grew cold within minutes. In terms of tangible auditory or visual evidence, though, his ghost was leaving him lacking and this concerned the professor. Perhaps this is part of what compelled him to come home that night with a sizable velvet pouch of Scrabble tiles. The stall in the antique shop advertised them as 15 for a quarter, and $5 had bought him the entire box.

"Jezabel?" He called out to what may well have been an empty room as he unburdened himself of his reusable bags. "I brought you home a present!" Shaking the cheerily clattering tiles in the pouch like dog treats, he made a loud show of pouring them into the large candy dish that served as their home. Wide mouthed and shallow, he reasoned that it would serve well for Jezabel to dig through, to find his letters to spell his words. The mans last conversation had not received the immortalization that his own name had; these post-it like messaged had been read, recorded, and then swept back into the hoard of alphabet chips, to be reused again should Jezabel wish. William...really hoped he would wish. Though Taboo was wonderful company, he couldn't help but feel almost lost without Jezabel so obviously nearby. All he could do was wait. Go back to his work, wait, and wonder when the hell his life had become a B rated horror movie.

)o(

Death was not a concept Jezabel thought of much. Perhaps to the living this would be a remarkable statement, but as a resident of the Other Side, he simply didn't ponder much on his disembodied status. It was rather like how, nationalists aside, an Englishman didn't specifically think, 'I am an Englishman' nor did he sit for hours thinking about just what it meant to be English. He would enjoy his home in England, enjoy the food of England, would consider his country a part of his base identity, but outside of a few zealots, no one really had it at the forefront of their thoughts as they went about their days. Such was the same for Jezabel and the culture of death. His own crossing was murky, blocked by fever and infection and pain. He couldn't pinpoint the moment he made the transition from organic to dark matter, and he felt no need to. Mortality suddenly seemed less important when one had entered eternity. He could not speak for other ghosts, again, having never met one, but it just didn't matter to him. Perhaps this ignorance was why he was so shook over the discovery and showing of his own dead body. 

Honestly, it felt vulgar, like walking in on ones parents making love; unclean and something one was never meant to see. This was an affront to the natural order, really; even those who believed in the afterlife generally believed that upon death, the soul ascended into the spirit realm to await judgment, and then either glory or damnation, never to see their bodies again until they were reunited, healthy and whole and very much breathing. By the very understanding of death, one could never see their own dead body any more than they could see their own face without aid of a mirror or a photograph. Yet there his was, a skull glowing on the screen of that computer, his cheekbones and his eye sockets and his missing tooth from...from some incident. He couldn't quite recall what had knocked it from his skull, he could just remember pain and the sensation of the side of his tongue long pressing into a gap. His shell now lay spread open for some half-assed mortification to sink his hands into, not aware that the pearl had long been harvested. 

What would they do with him? What WERE they doing with him? God, he cold barely recall what he had known as a surgeon, that information muddled in with the world's standard medical knowledge into a scrap soup, without any way of knowing which facts came from where. What were his ideas, true and innovate, what was the ways of the world, their beliefs and superstitions? How had those evolved into a modern practice? Would his bones be x-rayed, would they be cleaned with lime, would he just be ground down for paint like ancient mummies or given a paupers grave, or fired away in a furnace?

He had never cared before, about death or being dead or what had happened to his body, but now it was all he could think about. His skull, his ribs, his legs that had carried him and his back that had taken so many beatings. Jezabel had no need for this mortal remains yet he longed desperately for them. To hold them as well as he could, to lay ghostly hands against a mortal skull, it would-! well, truly he had no idea what it would be like or what, if anything, it could accomplish for him, but he longed for it. For so many years his spirit and his body had been one, soul melding to marrow, essence with chemical, hormones and electrical impulses and emotions and dreams and regrets and pains and hunger and longing, all of it thrown together into the singular form that was Him. Deeply, a part of his spirit was drawn to his other part, longing to be whole again. This part was the fool. 20 odd years physical, over 100 as ghost, to be physical again was a folly and honestly a bit terrifying. Though without the ability to feel physical pain, the memory of fire dancing upon his skin at fathers whip strike lingered and he had no desire to suffer in such a way again. No, it wasn't a true unity he desired, but a symbolic one. Jezabel wanted to gaze into the empty hole of his own skull, the place where eyes once rested, beautiful and violet and sad. Once upon a time he had coveted a pair of eyes to add to his collection, and here he was without even one pair to call his own. Their remnants, their brittle brown and gray caverns, that's all he could run his unreal fingers across, if he had the chance...

It was said that mourning was for the living, and not the dead. The deceased have long since passed, either into eternity or oblivion, and the process of a wake and burial and grief were all for those left behind. It was the widow who wanted to lay coins upon her husbands eyes, children who needed to leave lillies on mothers stone. Yet here was Jezabel, among the dead, needing to face his own mortality,

)o(

For 3 days William's phone scarcely stopped ringing and by the end of that third day he was putting serious thought into changing his number. Whichever officer leaked it to the press deserved to have his nose broken and his lack of sleep allowed William the macabre delight of such a fantasy. Every fucking journalist wanted a bite of this case. Honestly he didn't understand it; London was a city built upon layers of the dead. Plague, famine, fires, rebuilding, more plague, rebuilding, wars, revolution, beading and hanging and more plague, there was surely not a single square kilometer one could go without finding themselves dining atop a long forgotten grave or 12! Construction crews were happening upon them all the time as their excavators dug through the earth for a new office building or parking garage. All Cooper could reason was the domesticity of this case resonated with the populace. This wasn't a crew with a giant metal digger contracted for a fast food chain; this was in someones own backyard, in a reasonably nice historic area. The fact that the body had been dated late Victorian to early Edwardian just added a juicy dollop of romance atop the ghastly sundae. Such a time in history was just perfect for ghost stories, bringing to mind Poe and creeky manors and wailing brides in black dresses. It was the very aesthetic whole genres of film were based on, and it was becoming quite the adventurous mystery, or so it seemed from the comments section of most newspaper websites.

"Fuck me running," Cooper sighed as he scrolled through a story from The Mirror, were there was a lively discussion about this being the suicide remains of Jack the Ripper. From the corner of his eye he saw his phone screen light up- he'd long since put it on silent- and a quick glance told him it was an unknown number and, thus, not something he was going to answer. He'd had enough of that, thank you. Cooper had given his statement to a couple smaller papers at first, hoping that a bit of sated curiosity would calm everyone's collective tits, but alas he had only fed the beast. And, to add to his woes, Jezabel had still been failing to actively haunt his own house. Frankly, it was a bit worrying, and he savored any cold brush against his clothes or seemingly unprovoked barking from Taboo, as they assured him his friend was still nearby. Anyone would surely need some along time after their corpse was plastered all over the six o'lock news, he reasoned. Still, he awoke each morning to see none of the tiles in the dish disturbed, and it started his days with a heaping dose of disappointment.

Huh. A phone ringing off the hook and the only one he wanted to talk to had been dead since the 19th century.

)o(

Thanks to the 24 hour news cycle and the comparatively short attention spans of the general public, most of the storm had blown over by the turn of the calendar month, and Cooper welcomed a somewhat quiet September. Over 3 weeks had passed since he'd discovered the body and ruins of a stone in his shrubbery, and while there had been a small hiccup of interest once the medical report had been released (a bullet was found with the corpse, but bones couldn't exactly be autopsied) but soon after that, many lost interest and sought out newer, more salacious entertainment. For this, Cooper was grateful. No charges of murder, hardly anyone calling him for a follow up anymore, everything could be back to normal, were it not for one very conspicuous missing piece.

Sometimes he wondered if they had taken Jezabel's spirit when they took the bones, so quiet had his house become. Were it not for his drained electronics, cold coffee, and brief flashes of lightning silver in dark corners, he would almost believe his theory. Jezabel graced him just enough to assure him he was still around, but all it did was gnaw at Coopers insides. His loneliness was often well tempered, as Ezra was never a stranger in his house, and he looked forward to those evenings. Food and drink and good TV were a great distraction from his fretful mind, but invariably the conversation always turned back to the ghost. Quiet, Cooper would always say evasively. It's been quiet. No new EVP, no more bed frames floating away.

Ezra said haunting often cycled like this, with active times and quiet times. Cooper could only hope this was true and not just internet forum Ghost Facer's nonsense.

)o(

As September grew older and brought with it deeper chills to a drafty house, Cooper could never be sure if his shivered were from his ghost or just the autumn breeze. This, of course, did nothing to sooth his worries. What even was he worried about? Jezabel was already dead, after all, so barring some spirit war or magical adventure waiting for him through a veil, Cooper was quite sure nothing really /bad/ could happen to his friend. On the other hand, he couldn't shake the notion that this quietness was just not normal for Jezabel. 

So Cooper, never one to be inactive, dredged up the most ancient of arts, a time-honored and sacred method of communicating with the dead and imploring them to heed ones call; bothering the /fuck/ out of them.

"Alright Jezabel, where's your lazy ass at?" Cooper finally called down the basement stairs one afternoon, armed with a wooden spoon in one hand and a metal pan in the other. Though never one to be too quiet in his own home, living alone, he made extra sure to be as loud and rucurous as possible. Each step landed on the creaky wooden stairs with a heavy pounding thud, and by the end of the staircase it was matched step for step with the resounding clank of his instrument. Usually favored by toddlers, the spoon and pot was an oft overlooked piece of musical apparatus, or so the witches he's found online claimed. Along with a bell or sage, this was supposedly a great method for stirring up some ghostly activity. Although 'witch;' and 'internet', when juxtaposed, conjured up images of twenty-something girls in head to toe Hot Topic lighting enough candles to warrant a fire hazard, William wasn't in any position to turn down guidance to the unknown. He didn't believe in witchcraft any more than he did ghosts 2 months ago and look where that fucking got him.

"Olly Olly oxen free!" He called down into the cold, cavernous basement listening as only his own voice resounded back to his ears. Another round of wood-to-metal also failed to rouse anything from his room mate. "Jezabel? Jezabel, come on out, please? Its me!"

Though the basement had several windows, they were narrow, high set, and clouded with both grime and the growth of weeds, allowing very little sunlight to reach the gray stone interior. It was enough, though, as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, to be sure to avoid any walls or the odd box or Rubbermaid tub he'd sat down there for storage. Aside from his laundry trips, though, he tried to make trips down here a rarity. It gave him a sense of unease that grew with each step downward, one that didn't diminish at all after learning the truth of his living situation. He wasn't welcome down here; at least, that was the vibe he got, a sense of agitation that seemed to radiate from every cobblestone and split in the cement.

"You uh...you like it down here, don't you Jezabel?" William called into the dusty haze, followed by a few more, softer thunks. "I hear you down here all the time...or at least I did. You've been...you'v'e been quiet, friend, I just wanted to see if you were alright?"

Three quick, sharp raps to the bottom of the pot, followed by silence. The ringing seemed to hang in the air, festooned on the anemic beams of sunlight like tinsel on a Christmas tree, but nowhere near as enticing. Down here the sounds seemed rude and intrusive which...sure, was sort of the point, honestly, to act as an alarm clock to the dead and shake them from their rest, but it just didn't seem as such a good idea now. The deeper he walked into the basement, the heavier his instruments seemed to grow, turning from wood to lead in his grip and making it nigh impossible to tap.

"I just...please, Jezabel?" a weak couple of knocks. "Listen, kid, I promise, no more policemen, ok? Its just us again, just us...I'm sure you're here. You like the basement, huh? Is it because it's quiet?" That didn't seem to be the answer. Jezabel appeared to love activity and noise, provided it didn't come from the vacuum cleaner or shampooer. Anything that made sound or produced heat or movement seemed to draw him in like moths to a porchlight; a tomb of a former scullery didn't seem to be the kind of place an educated college graduate like Jezabel would hang out. Judging by what little he knew about it, it hardly seemed the place he would have frequented in life!

Edging his way around a few crates of winter clothes, William squinted into the dirty corners of the smaller room. It was a disaster, honestly, a cyclone of cracked stonework and plaster so badly cracked that large chunks of it had full on slid away from the wall, heaped into the corners along with the skeleton of an old wringer, several rusted pipes that now went nowhere, and scraps of a laundry basket that might be as old as he was. All of this was encased in veils of cobwebs, making the corner even less appealing to William.

Again he implored for Jezabel's response, his company, anything, and again he was denied.

"God damn it Jezabel please!" he called out with a solid note of desperation. "I ...I miss you, ok? And I'm worried about you! You haven't taken any of the gifts I've left you, and Taboo misses you!"

He'd truly expected that last one to do the trick, considering how many hours he seemed to dedicate to his dog, but silence was his only companion. Silence, , and darkness, the latter broken only by ashen, muddled yellow afternoon sun-

No...no, not only. From the corner of his eye, William was drawn to something much brighter, a bit of light that struck out like lightning in a darkened sky. Vivid, clear and the color of honeysuckle, it was a blush of purity in the basement and immediately William was drawn to it. Easing his pot and spoon down to his side, he cautiously stepped forward, stirring up pools and gusts of dirt in his wake. The light came from a small crack near the corner of the wall, far too low down to make any sense at all. This was a basement, and the windows were settled at ground level almost 6 feet up, how could light like this be pooling around on the floor? Where the hell was it coming from?

William never got to find out. As he reached forward to shove some of the neglected and abandoned wood beams out of the way, just as he caught a glimpse of a cavernous black pit in the wall behind, hell broke loose all across the room. First it was the door to the stairs, which banged shut with such force and vigor that he swore he could FEEL the tension in the air reverberate around him. Just as violently, it was wrenched back open, and then shut again, both the sound and the air pressure violently assaulting William's eardrums. The pot and spoon clattered to the floor as he clapped his hands over his ears, just in time too; every box of storage he had stuck down there toppled over, their chorus of shattering glass letting him know that his spare dishes did NOT seem to survive the fall.

"Je...Jezabel? Is that you doing this?" he asked, quite necessarily, because who else could be responsible for this?

Another thunderous crack from the door was his answer, about as verbal as Jezabel ever got with him, so he took that as a solid and obvious 'yes'.

"Jezazbel, what is your problem?!" he demanded, sidestepping the mess of upturned boxes spilling out Christmas sweaters and the remains of some ceramic mugs. "What has you so upset?!"

Jezabel declined to answer this time, unless he counted the sound of something solid and heavy hitting the floor above him, a noise which sent him cringing and Taboo into a barking frenzy. For a moment he feared for his dogs well being, afraid she would be harmed or her tail shut in the door as Jezabel set himself to a fit, but that woe was quickly dashed. Jezabel, he felt sure, would never harm her.

His own well being, sadly, only had so much faith.

He took the stairs two at a time, surprised that he could still be so spry in his comparative old age, and it was like a video game, trying to get through the door, constantly opening and slamming square in his face. He was no Mario, damnit, and he knew he'd do more than just shrink down in size if he was slammed down these stairs by poltergeist-driven fury. Indeed, it caught a wayward elbow, skinning his arm up bad enough to sting like a bitch and, surely, bruise later, but adrenaline kept most of the immediate pain at a distance.

"Jezabel?" he called again as he reached the threshold and scampered through to the kitchen. He was definitely here; every cupboard was flung open, plastic cups and paper plates flung across every surface, counter and floor. Shards of cups crunched underfoot as he tread cautiously into this war zone. "Jezabel, please, please calm down!"

The spirit did nothing to head his cries, and Taboo sent up another renewed round of howling from the living room as another thud crashed through the house. This was defiantly what he had heard downstairs, and up here, he swore it sounded like Jezabel had picked up the couch and let it slam back down- oh. Yes, indeed, that was exactly what he was doing, and with the coffee table as well, and poor Taboo bolted away from this shit, obviously not keen on being an extra in this episode of the Twilight Zone.

Despite the fear of broken feet or bruises, William eased into the room, looking around with fervent eyes and a pounding heart, hoping that Jezabel might manifest. His eyes searched for a glimpse of silvery hair, of a bloodstained gown. Nothing. Not even a breath of cold wind. The only air that stirred was from the constant slamming and opening of doors, and it sounded like he was carrying this trick all throughout the first floor now.

Although for weeks he had begged for Jezabel to speak to him, he still recoiled and nearly floored himself when he finally heard Jezabel's voice for the first time, or at least, what seemed to pass for it. The scream penetrated the air like a sword through tender flesh, seeming to shatter William's very bones. His knees buckled and again to clawed at his ears, wanting to sooth away the sharp, jagged pain of this voice, but there was no escape from it. Collect calls from the dead, it seemed, ran on a very effective speaker phone. It wasn't simply the volume, though; it was how it seemed to come from nowhere, how it seeped into his ears and his skin and his skull and, most damaging, the sorrow it held within that one feral note. Horror movies, funerals, documentaries, William had never heard a sound more pained. It was unmistakably human, but the high, piercing shrill carried with it an unmistakably inhuman tone. Sorrow, pain, suffering, loss, it was made manifest within this one sound.

"Jez-" he tried to scream back through the noise, but it was oppressively thick and almost tangible, and William's own voice could not cut through this physical wall of agony. It was pointless to even try, not until it finally tapered off. Relief was not his though, because the scream did not fade off into a blessed silence, but something far worse. Echoing around him in waves cold as the Atlantic came Jezabel's cries.

"...Jezabel," he breathed, ears still ringing as he looked desperately around the room. This noise may be softer on the hearing but it was torture on his soul. Just like his wailing, this soft weeping carried with it a pang of mourning too raw for him to handle. It was as though the loss of the body freed the soul to surpass the limits of physical pain, of mortal endurance. At catechism growing up, his teachers had talked about the pure bliss of heaven, how when they die, humans shed their flesh and join the Lord in heaven and are bathed in a pure, unsullied joy. This seemed somewhat like that, just replace the religious bliss with the tears of the damned.

"J...Jezabel, please...where are you? Let me see you?" he pleaded of the empty room. The furniture was now firmly in place, at least in this room, and only Jezabel's sobbing reached him. "Please, Jezabel, can...can I help you? Let me help you, I can get your tiles, or the tape recorder...can you speak now?" he inquired. "...God, please stop crying, Jezabel, I can't-!"

The screams, the wailing, they had reached through into William's very rips to grab ahold of his heart; the sound of cracking gunfire pierced it straight through, and he clutched his chest as though the bullet had been made for him. Though his hands found no blood, nor any wound from which it would seep, he lost his breath all the same and gasped for several moments as the sound echoed through the house. Silence finally shrouded the house in its wake, for a moment at least, until the body crashed to the floor at his feet.

This, finally, sent William to his knees. It lie before him for only a moment, vivid scarlet and silver and the bottle green of a shredded waistcoat before it dissolved like paper in a crackling flame, but Jesus Christ it was a physical jolt that shook the house when it hit. He. When he hit. There was no mistaking that it was Jezabel who lie before him for 3 heartbeats. That blonde hair of his, turned gray by death, those wide blue eyes rimmed all the way round with white from his terror.

Jesus fucking Christ. 

He tried to find his own voice, but his throat was parched, and his tongue fat and numb in his mouth. There was no way he could even think of what to say, let alone will himself to make words. It was all he could do to crawl forward to the wall, to cling onto the shelves there to try and bring himself upright, his legs shaking precariously beneath him. One makeshift rung after another to righted himself, barely taking in the mess each shelf held, of upturned candlesticks and toppled Pledge and- oh. The photograph was left just as it was, though now as William took in Jezabel's face, softened with black and white film and the erosion of time, all he could see were those eyes, wide and shocked and round as the very coins he left him as gifts. William reached out for it, this image of dead men, a stranger and a companion, but Jezabel's screams jolted him away just as soon as his fingertips touched the smooth print. Or rather, someones screams. These seemed not only more human, like an actual, normal voice, but also so much...smaller. A young woman, perhaps, or a small boy, crying out once, sharply, and William withdrew his touch as though he'd been shocked by the photograph.

Quiet hung in the air; he couldn't even hear Taboo now, and he hoped she had found sanctuary under the kitchen table or in the laundry room, but just as he opened his mouth to try and speak again, a crack resounded through the air, like a clap of thunder, followed by another boyish cry.

'Please, Daddy, I'm sorry!"

Nothing he'd heard yet stilled him quite as solidly as those four words, and despite the perceived age, he knew it instantly to be the voice of his ghost.

Silence. Another shocking crack, another strangled cry, the sound of a boy in pain, suffering. Whimpering followed, a wet, sticky sniffle, and a gasp overlapping a third lightning strike.

"If you were sorry you wouldn't have disobeyed me in the first place."

Definitely. Not. Jezabel. This voice was too cold, the icy sound of iti not matching the image of the blonde man burned onto that 8x10 bit of card stock. They were so god damned solid, sounding as though they were two real people just one room away, clear and only slightly muffled. Though his muscles felt like a warm Jell-O mold, William managed to half-scamper and half-tumble down into the hall and careen into the parlor, to find it empty. Ramshackle, yes, but empty, and now the cracking sound and cried came from the morning room he had just left.

Honestly it sounded like someone being flogged, struck or whipped and that, added to the youth's suffering cries, seemed to the the long-awaited bullet that finally lodged into his heart. Over and over he heard it, the snapping sound becoming rhythmic and almost wet while the screams softened down to gross whimpers and a desperate groan. William felt one of his own in his throat, joined by the taste of bile at the implication of what he was hearing.

"...Jezabel..." he whispered, sure that his faint mewl could not carry above the boys wet sobbing, but the house quieted once more, these sounds fading off quietly, oft enough for him to hear the footsteps creaking up behind him in the hallway.

Despite the horror show happening all around him, his stomach still sank at this noise, the too-real fear of an intruder in the house resonating with him in a way his ghosts's tantrum could not. Of course he knew it was Jezabel, of course he knew there was no murderer in his house with a knife, ready to gut him. It didn't stop him from jumping three feet as he stuck his head out into the hallway through the arch and actually saw a person striding towards him. There Jezabel stood, in all his faded out ghostly glory, clothed in a long white coat, his hair loose behind him. And he was not alone. Before him stood a man, not the Alexis Hargreaves in the portrait, but a younger man, maybe easing past 30, with blunt cut hair around his jaw and a lecherous grin across his face. Instantly William decided he didn't 'like the look of him, not at all, and Jezabel seemed to share this opinion. As the man drew up towards him, he tried to recoil, stopped by what looked like a painfully tight grip around his forearm.

"Hey! Let him the fuck...oh..." right, William was a flesh and blood audience at a show for the dead, and even to his own ears his voice felt out of place and ineffective. It made no matter, though, because just as the man drew Jezabel's face close, the image was lost, William's vision blinded by slips of brilliant white, a wreath of thorns, and the sound of a pair of children laughing. The scene of warm summer grass rushed across his face with the heat of sunlight, and just as William turned his gaze towards this warmth, he saw a small figure disappear up the stairs, long blonde waves and the hem of a ruffled skirt. Such a lovely image, such a pretty thing, he couldn't help but want to follow, racing to the foot of the stairs after this giggling child. Just as they darted out of sight around the curve of the stairs, though, something came rushing down the opposite way.

Red and writhing down the stairs, this mass of organs was not nearly as inviting, and William fucking swore he could feel the blood seeping down to his skin as this Stephen King waterfall reached his legs.

That was it, that was so it, no, nope, he was done, and all but slipping on the bloodsoaked floor, William turned and sprinted for the front door, only to find it very securely sealed despite the unlocked deadbolt.

"Je..Jezabell!" he cried out, hoping he didn't sound nearly as terrified as he actually was. "Please, Jezabel, stop this shit, let me out!" The door held fast, though, despite the way he pried and shimmied and begged. "Please, God, please Jezabel let me out of here!" But Jezabel did no such thing. In fact, the noises were starting up again, screams where children once laughed, these from an older man again, and William cringed, pressing his face into the wood of the door as he tried to ignore the suffering in each tone.

When the voices started again, they came not in waves, but in floods, one overlapping the other, some yelled, some soft, speaking of blood and the Bible , of Cain and Able and sins of the flesh. Words of damnation washed over the promise of love, all echoing around a man begging for contrition. Around him the doors began to slam again, open and shut with painful thunks, all but the one he clawed at with such desperation. More cries,, the sound of a metal blade against something hard, a rougher boys voice in scolding tones and patronizing scoffs. Someone sang an off key nursery rhyme, one William knew from books but had never heard aloud.

"Jezabel," he held the name on his tongue like a prayer, clinging to his only clue to this madness. "Jezabel, please...I'm here, Jezabel, please stop!"

One last gunshot called an end to the show, its echoes serving as the encore and the curtain call. The doors stilled throughout the house, and there was no more hollering, no children singing their macabre tunes. As a full moment passed in silence, he finally dared to think that perhaps it was over. Caution colored his movements as he peered over his shoulder, back into the foyer towards the stairs and the wide hall, to see that, still, he was not alone. Glowing faintly in the shadows of the late afternoon sun, Jezabel sat on the floor with his back towards him, bare skin covered only with his blonde hair and what looked like a white sheet. Well, mostly white. Bloodstains soaked in all around the soft folded linen, which he clung to his chest.

"...Jezabel?" he whispered in a hushed voice, not wanting to break this reprieve and start a whole new round of torment. Silence, and stillness.

"Jezabel...it's me, it's William," he cooed. He softly approached the form, almost completely solid, as though approaching a wounded animal. Which, considering the blood around him, he might as well be. "I'm right here, I'm not going to hurt you...can you hear me?"

Though he made no motion of understanding, he also did not fade away as William drew near, and as his form came into closer view, he gasped. Through the parts in his hair, William could see tendrils of white snaking all the way around Jezabel's back, corded scars running all the way down to his hips and behind, curling over onto his sides and over his ribs. Suddenly the crackling sounds he heard earlier had a far clearer visual to accompany them.

"Oh...oh God, Jezabel..."he whispered, almost reaching out for him, but he stopped. That would be not only futile, but potentially cataclysmic if it set him off again. Instead he just watched, Jezabel's ghostly form shaking slightly with unreal breaths. With light steps, he circled the young man, wanting selfishly, ghoulishly, to see his face closer, and instantly he wished he hadn't. a large bruise marred one eye, washed out lavenders and grays acting as the palette for a spirit's wound, as faded burgundy dripped from a small cut at his temple...surely, though, not enough blood to have caused all that stained the sheets. He had a sickening feeling that there were worse injuries hiding beneath his coiled posture and crumpled sheet, a hunch that only grew as he noticed streaks of something definitely not blood across his cheeks, lips and throat.

"You know I love you, don' you child?" William startled violently as a voice consumed them both, drowning them not with volume, as it was quite soft, but with how it came from nowhere.

Jezabel shuddered, his light eyes downcast, as he nodded almost imperceptibly. Behind them, in the silence left by the booming voice, a soft thud could be heard, then the shush of something flat against a wooden floor. Paranoid, William glanced behind him and saw, finally, that the portrait had been moved, knocked over as though by a soft breeze. Face up, he could tell even from that distance, and he could see it clearly in his mind. Jezabel, and Alexis Hargreaves, 

"Of course. I love you so much, Father."


End file.
